The Opera Of Flames
by AnAngelOfMusic
Summary: A charred opera is in ruins, and Erik is hiding underneath it's remains in a burning depression and creative block. When a poor girl stumbles into the opera looking for shelter, the only person to suffer as much as the phantom brings more light than he could have ever imagined.
1. Chapter 1

_"Think of me"_

How haunting that curse was. Every moment of life was possessed by her, every peace disturbed by the ringing of her voice in these aching caverns. The lake itself unstill as if her sopranos vibrated the waters once more.

Tears dribbled down his thoughtful, handsome eyes. Handsome, he thought, and shivered at the idea. How those eyes clashed with his every being. How they pleaded for her, how they began to sting from weeping now that she was gone.

_I was born for her. I was born for that pain, for that bliss when it was all painless. Born to dream of the time when all was blissful. _How soured his own thoughts seemed to sound.

The eyes drifted to piano keys and his numbness returned as he played them. The only friend in his world now silencing his pain again, listening and hearing his heart as it pieced together. But the passion he felt in everything has died. Killed by the very thing it burned for.

* * *

Her feet never made a sound as she wandered towards fate. They never did, as she made an effort to be unseen and unheard. She felt the skin on her face grind against her cheek bones. Her legs hobbling down the cobbles of a cold Parisian street, all the while her fair skin revealing her emaciation to the many that passed her unbothered.

She rested against a wall gulping in the air, staying hungry for it for what seemed a half hour. She stumbled nowhere and got exactly where she stumbled. The wandering was all to keep herself busy, and warm, but she never got anywhere doing it. The snow seemed to flay her through her thin cotton garments.

She wandered around in search of shelter, in fear of the overcast. If it snowed she would be dead. If it rained she would be dead. The clouds offered no other option besides death.

Voices seemed to whisper about her as they passed and chuckle as the individuals became distant. She was used to it, and preoccupied by the idea of food at the moment. She was too thin to last much longer without it. She realized she would have to. Every stand refused her the scraps, every kind soul refusing her own.

"There in the daylight and center of France, the capital of Paris, we find a beggar?" The lashing comment came from the whip like tongue of a passing civilian. The girl hurried in her search of lodging.

The streets of Paris themselves seemed to stare at her grime and lack of propriety. She wished she had the option to be proper, but the difficulties of birth reined her doomed from those dreams.

_There, _she had found it. "Palais Garnier" still charred and abandoned; looking misplaced really in the golden French streets. She could relate, and attached herself most instantly. It was then she dragged her bones up the steps and into the blackened marble halls until she found her feet in the dusty theatre, kissing the ground and basking in the contrast of black and red cushion seats. Her knees lowered themselves to the ground slowly, and her head blurred as she fell asleep unknowingly in the halfway mark between hell and heaven.

She awoke at the same time as she always did, 4 a.m the beginning of her waking hours. _Today is different. I will make it different. _Determination was her greatest trait and weakness depending on perspective.

This place had been burnt beyond recognition, she had been here once as a child. Though it had now become charred and cold, there was beauty in it to the girl. Spectacular beauty only she saw within the discolored and half eaten world of the opera of flames.

She began her collection of supplies hastily.

First, the hardwood was stripped from the cracked floors on the stage as best as could be managed. She saved the unburned pieces for her decided construction, where the torched oak was used to board the windows and doors. she also began to rip the red velvet from the seats and curtains, and the cushions she saved for what would become her bed. is addition it was decided the curtain ties would be good for fixing the wood pieces together.

she held in her skirt pockets limited supplies, stale bread crumbs, and a sowing needle with no thread. she decided the latter would become a great tool in creating a blanket from the stripped fabrics, if she could find some fine string or in an ideal case, actual thread for stitching. But nothing for her was an ideal case. _Best to check the dressing rooms. _

She explored deeper into the halls of the building, minding its instabilities to a fault. Finally she stumbled into the first of the several rooms. It seemed wrong to strip these places of their values. These places that had once been the world to so many. she frowned. If only there was a candle, she might see better, or even feel better. The opera was eerie, and lonely, and she felt like the shadows danced around her, ghosts of its past glory.

She fumbled around the floor for several seconds before her eyes could adjust. What she did see was increasingly odd. Every detail of the room seemed unscathed from the fire, from a small couch in the corner to the makeup covered vanity. She walked behind the changing screen, and to her delight found several dresses untouched and hanging on the metal rack.

She exited the dressing room, and ran through the charred halls to the next. This room was as black as any other indecent crook in the opera house. She felt goosebumps suddenly, and began to jump to supernatural conclusions. she shook away the thought and decided she must not fear the room, but live in it.

It would have been greatly preferred to sleep on the stage again, but this new room held the greatest stability and safety in comparison to the rest of the house, as well as the best supplies.

She collected her materials and made her way back to the room. The girl grinned at the idea of such elegance being hers in a way, the fine silk dresses and costumes, the white vanity and delicate pink sofa, the grand mirror which put the rest to shame. "How odd I could even be here" she felt surprised she had said that out-loud. weakness entered her starving body almost instantly, and she dizzily wandered towards the couch before collapsing upon it.

she propped her legs up and sat in the dark room staring at them. Each bony leg seemed smothered in black bruises and were almost consistently in pain. She distracted herself with the only possession of any value she had left. a silver ring that looked out of place on her silly pale fingers. She once again slept for the sheer reason of being to weak to do anything else.

* * *

He thought only of who she was as he watched her.


	2. Chapter 2

She felt dawn through the cold walls of the dressing room and stumbled off of the sofa. Her head throbbed and she was plagued with hunger; worse than usual. She shook from the frosty draft floating through the cracks of the opera, and headed towards the dresses to check for something that might provide more warmth than her flimsy, old clothing.

They all seemed to be not much better than her own dress, but the fine fabrics held no holes unlike the scraps she wore. She began to undress behind the screen, fearing the disease a chill would bring to her. She grabbed from the several dresses the plainest, if it at all could be referred to as plain.

The silk was white and delicate against her blue fingertips, and she scrambled to get it on, tying the corset and assortment of ivory ribbons as best she could. It still sat too large on her carcass; and the bust chaffed against her hips as she walked towards the mirror.

She stared depressingly at her reflection, the red hair draped around her shoulders was dull and brittle, and she remarked at the whiteness of her face and lips. The dress felt uncomfortably out of place on such an ugly thing.

She walked off unsure of how to function in the large skirts, but soon was able to get the hang of it as she once again exited onto the front stage of the opera house.

Her body was tired again from the short amount of walking, and she realized just how weak she really was as she dragged herself towards the only entrance and exit to the entire Palais Garnier, (as she herself had ensured) a small side door from the disheveled charcoal staff kitchen that lead to a secluded ally way.

Her feet carried themselves past the trashcans, something she would raid in her most desperate scenario. They made it onto a rocky stone road which she hoped might lead her to the market district, and to her luck (as rare as it was) that was exactly where she found herself at the end of it.

She performed her usual humiliations before receding back into the safety of darkness, empty handed with the exception of a burnt end of bread.

Her legs failed her halfway between the dusky backstreet and the side entrance. Her stomach rebelled against her thoughts of making it home before eating, and she sat consuming her crisped end of baguette lonely and in silence.

She stared up at those menacing clouds, feeling the storm intensify with every moment.

Upon finishing, she departed and concluded once again in the opera house, gasping for air from her walk, and rubbing her knee caps like an old woman.

* * *

She was pitiful. But she had in every way intruded upon his peace and must be dealt with. He sat there in what remained of the rafters glaring down at his unassuming prey. She would be increasingly easy to be rid of, her senses were dulled from weakness, and so she neither held the advantage of defense or strength against him. Perhaps, however, he might play with his victi—what was it she wore?

The snowy gown draped against her white flesh, tormenting its viewer. _It was hers_. "_It was __**hers**_!" he bellowed bitterly, the release unfortunately giving his position away to his target. No she would have to suffer for this.

He would not be merciful and kill the beggar painlessly; perhaps he would allow nature to take its course on her feeble starving frame. A corpse would be found soon enough, and what worse of a way is starvation to die? He had found his attempts at that form of suicide quite tormenting.

He changed positions swiftly as to not attract direct attention to his form, and once again focused on the whimpering creature below him.

The girl shook like a leaf after the piercing, pained scream. She felt her foolish fears of ghosts creep up. How it seemed to be the explanation to everything in this place. The feeling of eyes watching you, the intact dressing room. "I'm sorry I am intruding on you spirit, I know this is your place" she called with a shaky voice. He became amused by this; once again he had been mistaken for an apparition. "I have to stay here though, and I am truly sorry. I will not touch any of the items in the dressing room, I will not stay there."

He belted out a sickening and perfect tenor voice

* * *

"Speak to me do you?

But who is it now who speaks?

Not a name, just a face, if it is a face at all.

More a sack of bones wasting my time

This person more ghostly than the phantom himself"

She sat stunned, the voice bringing gooseflesh to her scrawny arms as it vibrated the empty halls. Was this an Angel or a Demon? Could anything evil sound so beautiful?

"What is the name of the pigeon who invades my home?" The voice dropped to Baritone now, and she couldn't decide whether it was menacing or inviting.

"Evangeline" the words seemed to silent the world for hours. And so she sat shivering in the white dress that had disrupted everything, from neither cold nor fear.

No,

fear was what she should have felt.


	3. Chapter 3

Evangeline sat there numb for ages. The chilly evening swallowed her form as she lay there shrunken.

Her hands seemed to clasp shut her mouth in attempts to remain silent and obedient to the voice. She wanted to appease him. _She had to, _She thought. Yet her nagging mind bit at her, _what other choice have I but to invade upon him? _Yet even now the mysterious voice watched her, and she felt him do it.

She ran for the dressing room, she need not linger where he could see her, though she feared there was no place where he couldn't.

The door slammed shut, crumbling an outside pile of ashen furniture. Her legs shook as she stared down at the dress. _Was this what the creature screeches for? _She corrected herself, _the man. _She clawed at the laces in the back of the dress, ripping at them frantically.

The gown dropped to her ankles and she ran for her old dress, which took her only moments to secure.

She had been wrong about one thing; the new dresses and her own were vastly different for keeping warm. She hung it back up on the rack, smoothing it and minding the lace. She sat on the sofa chattering soon after, as her body trembled for any heat.

She began pacing the rooms in hope of gaining some, but felt it was to little or no avail. She began to worry, but quickly remembered the curtain fabrics in the corner of the room. These surely weren't _hers_.

She had just grabbed the curtain when she realized the room was bright. To her shock, there on the vanity were four lit candles, matches, and a letter. A letter addressed to her, sealed by a skull. _Perhaps I will be sealed by a skull soon enough._ The idea ate at her as_ s_he picked at the edge of the crimson wax and opened the message.

_"**Evangeline**,_

_I have come to observe it is your idea that you will be staying here; it has also come to my understanding that you cannot provide any compensation for this, contrasting any others to tenant my opera. I do not request of you to clear box five for me consistently, no, I most adamantly demand it. Disobedience is not an option, and neither are second chances. If incomplete by midnight every night starting tomorrow, I will, most assuredly, take action._

_With the deepest sincerity,_

_**O.G**"_

she peeled the wax skull from the envelope, and kept it on the vanity. She was deeply tempted to hold in her hand the only piece of the opera ghost that was visible until it crumbled in her palms.

She began to feel fear, most rightly. How was it that he knew she could read? What would he have done if she couldn't?

Her head felt dizzy with stress and she felt nauseous. She hurried to the couch, and soon found herself fainting onto it.

Evangeline woke to the burned out candle smoke, and kicked herself for not having managed to blow them out. She frowned imagining half eaten candle sticks, and decided to use them only out of necessity in the next case. She eased herself from the sofa and removed the drapes from her beaten body while her eyes adjusted. As she rose to the floor, her feet met with some sort of material, and she quickly launched herself towards the candles in fear.

The light filled a portion of the room, "Oh my god." There she saw on the floor was _her _white dress torn and scattered. She gasped and her mind raced at the idea of the ghost in her room while she slept, perhaps even watching her sleep. she immediately grew weak from the idea, but straightened herself quickly enough. _midnight was the greater worry, _she thought. Box five was probably in ruins right now, and she felt noon air creeping about her in the room. She would work quickly.

She hurried off in search of the box, and was stopped by the voice once again. She savored the sound every depth of the song, and trembled at the words of intimidation.

"Little pigeon, faring well?

T'would be a pitty should I ascend, from my

burning lakes and scalding metal cages,

from my hell, just to improve your situation."

her mouth pursed in a surprised O shape.

"voice yourself little pigeon, is the pest faring well?"

She nodded dumbly, and spoke "Yes, yes I a-"

The velvet voice turned murderous, and she began to recognized the lyrics as attacks.

"I said voice yourself."

She felt confused, and spoke louder, to no avail. His own voice grew louder, and fiercer as he sang at her.

"Are you shy to voice yourself wicked rat?

I refuse to recognized the garbage in your tone

as something of the same species to my melodious own;

little pest, sing, and I will judge"

a silence engulfed the room after the peaked note, and the final rung dark and sweet in the opera

"if you can."

* * *

He glared down at the weak mind he played with, and noted the unusual shade of red her hair was.


	4. Chapter 4

His puppet sat there dumbfounded at his intense requests. She seemed thick in the head to the common eye, and perhaps she was. There was something about her eyes that made him think otherwise. There was a cunning blade behind those purple eyelids.

"Sing, if you can" he repeated. He demanded.

What little blood was left in her flooded her face and her visage was brought into the direction of the floorboards.

"What is it you want me to sing?"

And a familiar tune possessed him in response,

"What the angel of music, sings in your head."

Upon spitting the words out his chest began to tear at itself inside his skeleton. _If only the angel of music, could sing songs __**her **__head. _

He ignored his weaknesses and distracted himself with anticipation, for what he assumed would be a screeching, squealing pig like the rest. He usually didn't give the beggars that wandered here this much time; He usually ended their lives swiftly. He usually never even asked for their names.

"I had been told," her lips moved, but suddenly he was not in the room as she sang. He was not sitting on the rafters twisting the strings of someone's mortality. He was not playing god, but he had joined him in the stars.

"One had once said,

your life will be,

Good one day.

That your life might be,

Worth something,

Little dove, he had said,

Little angel of mine,"

_Angel, _The words brought him crashing back to earth.

"Little dove, sing again,

And you are never confined,

By the flesh and the bone,

That will not long be mine,

Flee as you will, but you'll never

Escape,"

The song was growing dark, and dripped with possibilities of its inspiration. She held the gift of connecting the listener to his own past, and his own fears. Or perhaps she held the same fears as him. Fears which resurged as hers did in every note.

That voice, her voice, it was not perfect; nothing like Christi-_hers. _In fact it was greatly flawed and untrained. But the gem behind it all, the unrefined diamond that ensnared his every being was the emotion, the poetry in it all.

The passion in her shriveled body; It was unmatched, and quickly swallowed him, and suddenly now it was gone. She had stopped singing.

His voice responded smoothly, and so unbearably false.

"a voice which pains the ear,

You have sung all you can,

I have heard all I'll bear"

He fled the scene entirely as his eyes dripped in mourning.

She would have to be gone tonight.

* * *

Evangeline sat in embarrassment and shame. She hardly focused on her search for box five, and in her head never let go of the idea that she was terrible at the only passion she held in her heart. It was as haunting as the meaning of her song.

A half burned clock sat on the wall adjacent from where she was resting. How remarkable it was she thought, how it was mutilated, and scorched, but ticked all the same, perhaps better than any other clock. Her green eyes stared at the hands as they climbed about, a beat to some unheard tune.

She pulled at a half burned chair to help her upwards, and yelped as her knees locked up. She understood the hunger would be the death of her soon. She feared the thought and held no way to prevent it; no courage to disregard morals and steal, nor the strength to do it.

"At least, no one will cry that I am gone. The sadness will die with me." She mumbled and reminded herself, "God has been kind, even if he has not been generous." There was a purpose for everything in this life.

She only feared the idea of eternally roaming the halls of this place, like the man without a face, the angel of song, the ghost of shadows.

She felt his eyes all around, his mind calculating her every move, scorning her. But she aimed to please him, how Evangeline craved his praise. Praise from a man she didn't know.

She stumbled up the dark staircase as best she could, avoiding the rubble and sharp glass, with her tender bare feet. Her legs failed her once again and her hands met the icy knifes as she launched them to catch her fall.

A shriek of agony echoed through the hallways and she yanked herself upwards, her palm was diced and bits of dirty glass imbedded themselves in her snowy skin, crimson dripping down from the wound.

She wept like a child, and her wet cheeks grew red. It wasn't for the pain she felt now, but for the infection that would surely follow. Evangeline was too weak to fight it, and too poor to cure it, and she knew it would kill her if she were to develop disease.

She continued on up the stairs sobbing for herself like a fool, wondering why she even sobbed. Her life had been full of pain, and that was going to end most likely.

Box 5 loomed on a pristine cherry door in bronze. The stairs themselves were demolished, but the lobby and box seemed mysteriously untouched as with the dressing room; perhaps her job was going to be easier than she thought. She entered the room and witnessed to her own amazement, pure luxury.

A leather seat sat at the right angle to see the stage from shadow, while on its left was a table with doves carved intricately atop it, the image barely covered by crystal scotch glasses. A warm blanket sat on the chair's arm, and she felt so deeply tempted to steal it for her own. But that would, as she had even thought, be stealing. Even if it was from a ghost.

She did, however, find herself taking a handkerchief for herself. A letter that seemed foreign to her, "E" was laced onto the cloth. Perhaps this was the ghosts name before he passed.

She tied the silk square around her wounded hand, and prayed he would not punish her for it. She noticed her ghost had set supplies in the corner of the room, and she began her work quickly.

There was little for her to do, though it was however, difficult for her greatly. She was truly a delicate creature, her back aching, hands raw, and knees brittle like an elderly woman. She finished nonetheless, within two hours. Every inch of the room was spotless, and the rich furniture was gleaming.

After she was done, she decided to pass on her daily trip to the market. The girl was far too weak to make it all the way, and would probably not be given anything for her troubles. She dragged herself back to the dressing room, her stomach growling and her body already beginning to decay.

Her rough lips scratched each other in dehydration as she pumped her trembling legs to the couch. She climbed on it and fell to dreams almost instantly.

She was scared awake by the door to her room being opened.

Her body went limp with fear, and she sat pretending to be asleep; she was in no position to defend herself, perhaps the intruders would take what they wanted and just-

A cold metal blade slithered against her jugular. "Please, please don't kill me"

The cackling laugh that followed seemed to pierce her being and she felt nauseated from panic. As her heart raced she saw the wound on her hand had reopened and was gushing blood.

"what's that girlie? Got a little hurt on those dainty lil' hands o' yers"

The man grabbed at Evangeline's tangled red hair, kneeing her in the back until she cried.

"Go'head n' cry, ain't nobody here to hear."

Except there was.


	5. Chapter 5

He pushed emotions from his head, and began to analyze the girl's situation coldly. He had two desperately large options; let her stay or condemn her to the streets. One was so much easier than the other, though he couldn't tell which of the two it was.

Agony burst through his ears like bullets and he jumped at the noise. His black cloak was soon fastened and he had swiftly ascended a hidden stairway, Punjab lasso in hand. Adrenaline pumped him closer to the mirror. His being burned at what he saw.

Evangeline clawed at him, her attacker, he watched the frail body scrambling away, rolling off the coach. The man let go, allowing her inches to crawl before he descended on his prey once again, kicking her face until it bled and moaned in pain. Cracking noises began as he gripped at her fingers and pulled them backwards.

His infamous bravery failed him and he felt, once again, helpless in the presence of true malevolence.

It returned momentarily in a rage.

Blood spurted from her pearl lips after being kicked continuously in the chest, she went unconscious from the pain, _Thank god for it, _He thought. The mirror slid open without the wicked menace noticing. He was otherwise preoccupied by the thoughts of god knows what, staring at the innocent he had collapsed on the floor. He approached her again.

The phantom glided from his shadows to receive him without a sound. The rotten worm wriggled in his hands as he obtained him and covered his wrists and tongue in cloth. The Punjab would be merciful, he didn't want mercy for this man. He turned to check on the little Evangeline, he feared every part of what he saw, most especially the blood that spilled around her. I guess the man for his own sins would be relieved of a greater punishment; he held no time to indulge in his tortures.

He fastened the rope around the demon's frightened neck, and pulled tight until he heard the familiar sound of bones splitting. He made sure to make it painful.

His legs swiveled around towards her limp body, and he began to scoop her up tenderly. He had turned towards the mirror when his shoulder blade met cold metal. He gasped, but held the scream. He refused to portray weakness.

He dropped the bleeding Evangeline gently on the ground, and turned to the fish he felt content to tear to shreds. His enemy grew pale. "Oh god, that…mask, I've heard of yo-" His final sentence was never finished as The Phantom delved into his beating chest with a knife.

He locked the dressing room door, to give them temporary relief. It wouldn't matter if more of them burst in in 5 minutes, as long as he and the girl were past the mirror, and it was closed tight. He could always deal with them later, perhaps in a better mood and with more time on his hands to do so...

His heart nearly stopped at the sight of her in his arms; she seemed crumpled, and dangled like a dead leaf in his grasp.

He felt sick as he realized a stream of blood slithering from a half cut wrist. He began to run. Though only minutes, it felt like hours to arrive at his lair, her dripping and crying in her sleep. If whatever hell she was in could be compared to slumber.

He worked fast on the deeper cuts, sterilizing and stitching them swiftly. The troublesome parts of her injuries were the snapped fingers that flailed about on her hand; he found a piece of scrap wood and bound them to it to allow their healing be even.

He grabbed a bottle of pain medication from his room, and tucked it into his pocket as he began to mumble. _What will happen if she sees this place? _He ran to the upstairs opera house and found 2 more robbers roaming the halls for prey. Their necks popped quickly under his pressure.

Despite the pain it would cause her, he had already collected her body in his arms and was running back for the dressing room with her in his arms. He set her gently down on the pillow and watched from the unseen corner of the shadows. If a creature stood in sight it was his for the slitting.

He sat like this for hours until she woke.

Evangeline's eyes fluttered open abruptly, and she noticed a swish of a cloak dragging itself through the giant mirror through blurry eyes.

Bits and pieces of the night fragmented her brain, and she once again wondered as she sat in pain and thought.

Was he man or angel?


	6. Chapter 6

She moved slightly and immediately her body felt crumbled. She felt bones twisted and squealed inside her, and ripped muscles screamed. A tear dribbled down her shallow cheeks. She sat up slowly and lifted herself from the cushions.

Evangeline shuffled to the mirror and traced her good fingers around the silver. Her chest began to heave and she burst into sobs.

"Little dove,

Look towards the light"

She stared into the mirror, drops from her eyes hitting the floor.

* * *

He gazed into those eyes, green and gold bathing in popped blood vessels. The look in them, it pierced. He felt as if she saw him, saw into his beating chest, into his regrets and fears, past his torments. Staring at him as though she truly was looking towards the light.

It was coincidence. She couldn't see through. Whether what she saw was glass or mask.

* * *

Evangeline turned towards the vanity, where a little candle warmed her heart. There surrounding it was food, and antibiotics. She smiled, those eyes looking more pitiful.

She examined her treasures, finding within them antibiotics, 2 wine bottles and a glass, a whole smoked salmon, a single bushel of grapes, a baguette, and a small brie wheel.

She was ravenous, but paused to pray before she fed, her jaw hurting as she moved it. "To my savior, god approves you, and loves you. He has blessed me with one of his angels."

With that final word he fled, down once more to the dungeons of black despair the fallen angel fled.

The bread smeared with brie crunched in her small, sore mouth, she ignored the pain and focused on the sheer luxury of everything. She moved on to the fish, and smiled with joy as the salmon fat and grapes melted in odd harmony on her tongue.

She had forgotten just how wonderful a full stomach was, just how lovely wine tasted.

She moved gingerly from the dressing table, slowly rising towards the door. She stumbled like an infant until reaching the stairs of box five, and ascended. Though slower and with one tender hand, she managed to clean the box once again as she now intended to do forever. She hummed while the feather duster shifted the dirt.

* * *

Green, how they slid into his thoughts, cutting past what was thought to be important. He felt depression tear at him, rip him from the inside, betrayal resurge into his veins. Back to the piano, he thought. Dull it all away.

But everything wasn't dulled. It was deeper.

The passion in his finger tips returned to their master's surprise as he started with the moonlight sonata, and made his way to an original, spontaneous piece, just as dark, twisted, and angry as the one before. Just as beautiful as his music ever sounded.

* * *

It started out like the sound of rain, faint, and soothing; yet it was different even from that. Every fiber stirred with the melancholia of the notes, caught fire with the deep blackness of the music. It splashed into the ears of the only other person to understand it besides its creator. She drifted towards it, her soul bursting with each triumph in the song.

She found her pain died away, the physical and mental scars consumed and embraced in the churning waves of music. The world melted away and she sat near the mirror, where it all streamed through loudest.

It was sheer compulsion that led her to sing.

* * *

"No darker than night time, than night time" laced with her words was desire purely.

"Blacker than the souls of the damned,

Quicker than lightning starts fires.

My ledger is redder than the rose with thorns,

My mind as slicing as knives,

Deep in my soul, I am good,

But to the shallow eye I have sinned,

And perhaps, I'm truly condemned."

He forgot the existence of everything but the song, the keys meshing with the rawness of her voice.

Her voice. He listened deeply to its scorn. Never was there anything like its expression. Never would he hear another with that in their depths. The world was superficial, but she wasn't.

His voice had no inch of rust in its golden projection. They sung together as no two ever did; and they told a story while the opera saw its greatest performance.

"Blackness I've seen it, I've dreamed it." His tenor sliced through the dusk.

"Darker than night is it truly?" she responded bright as daylight

"little pest, now you're here,

Now I see clearer,

I scorn the blindness I held"

"Caressing your words never saves you,

I am one who knows this best."

"What have you seen little dove?"

"Thing's I could never say."

"What have you seen little angel?" The words slipped out, but they were not regretted.

"Thing's I could never repeat."

"What happened my girl?"

"Innocence gone, yet protected,

life I'd love to have lost."

They both realized then, the piano had stopped, and that they we're both faced to face behind thin glass, though one could only sense it, the other knew.

Tears had streamed for the third time today down her white skin, but for once they were met with a hand that stopped them at her chin.

His chest throbbed, his mouth dry and gasping.

"your innocence here, I'll protect it.

Life I love that still lives."

He guided her single hand through the mirror, down to the darkness.


	7. Chapter 7

My dearest readers,

Sorry, this chapter was a little late. I ended up falling asleep in the middle of writing yesterday (I hold no skills in time management and have unfortunately been getting 5 hours of rest every night). Also, my apologies if the last two chapters weren't as ideal to you. I was falling asleep as I wrote them. All of your reviews are deeply appreciated, and I hope to receive more; I look forward to reading them all and would like to say a formal thank you to everyone who has or will write them.

With Gratitude,

Your Angel

* * *

Her small hands trembling and cool, felt natural against his palms. He recognized her face now, and saw himself like a reflection. She was the outcast, she was the survivor.

Those green eyes stared forward at him, blind in the lack of light. He wished it could be that way forever, just blindness, and sound rolling through their ears.

Her legs moved slowly in the dark hallways and she trusted him to guide her, guide her through the blackness to someplace better, someplace brighter.

She could barely make out the figure of him in front of her, powerful shoulders and a strong jawline, his silhouette turning to check on her on occasion. The edge of his mask making one side of his face more distinct, amongst other things.

He had been whispering lyrics into the air, producing a sound which punctured her every fiber and thought with sweet poisons.

Light, light streamed suddenly from every corner of space abruptly. Wax and smoke split by the bonds of fire pouring into her eyes, revealing to her another world.

She broke from his grip, and he felt thrust into reality from the warmth of dreams.

"Will I see,

The triumphs and failures

Of any man?

Or perhaps the perfections of an angel

Who wishes himself

to be one of

the many men"

the word didn't mar him as it had before, and he responded with vibrancy.

"Angel,

I am your angel."

He was stolen from his firm ideals of the life he should have deserved, and walked in silence to her bruised side.

And he expected then that she be his.

"come, eat you frail thing." Her large eyes questioned his speaking voice. She had never heard it, and felt like an infant learning its first word.

"Why are you crying?" her thoughts we're interrupted by his questions.

"No one has ever been so kind to me, not in a very long time."

How could he have ever thought about harming this little, defenseless girl? His heart bled for a reason other than the usual, he turned from her and clutched at it.

He travelled towards the kitchen like a ghost. He was here, and gone in seconds.

the same meal as she had eaten earlier returned on a platter, being carried by his pale fingers, and he motioned her to a nearby table with two seats.

"The winters have kept the food I get very limited." "Thank you" She didn't mind, she could have eaten that same meal forever. She scarfed down every crumb.

Her lips sipped at the dark wine and she paused "What is your name".

He had been sitting there, absent mindedly watching her bruised cheeks rise and fall with painful chewing. The words halted his thoughts of tracing the pain from her jaws away.

If he told her it would shatter the illusion, make him human. He would be forced to explain. Forced to let her in.

"Erik." It felt raspy to say.

The array of questions he expected never came, and she continued to drink in silence. He cleared his throat.

"How old are you?"

She looked up at him, and stared at the pearl mask she had readily avoided eye contact with before.

"20"

Her body looked strained, and worn. It was hard to believe someone so hurt by the world had spent so little time in it. Things had been the same for him.

"and you, my angel?" the sentence came out shakily.

"I am 35." His hands played with a stray fiber on the table cloth. It bothered him a little, that she was so young. Yet he supposed they were both aged from cruel experiences.

He looked up and saw her plate cleaned, those marvelous green eyes staring at him, telling him everything and leaving him lost all the same. They sagged a little at the ends, he recognized the look before, behind someone else's brown and perfect curls.

Thoughts of _her _corrupted this memory.

She felt surprised as his hand ensnared hers and lifted her from the table. The warmth extending to her hips as another palm met her waist and began guiding her tired structure through the place.

It was sickening to feel the bones poking through her dress.

She leaned to and fro, and gripped his arm for support as she walked. When suddenly they stopped at a series of steps. They rerouted from here to the center of a large room, edging further and further from a door down the hall.

He had almost done it. The swan bed was not meant for her. She was nothing like… She wasn't _Christine_. He wouldn't make her into Christine.

Pain burned his systems as he thought the name. She would have to sleep in… no the floor was much better than that.

He scooped up her teetering body to his chest. Things would be simpler for her. The bond was sealed when she fell asleep in his arms.

No. She was not Christine.


	8. Chapter 8

Her hand touched piano keys and she woke startled and aching. Music hit her ears and she jumped, rolling off of a piano bench and smacking the floor.

She was swallowed in blackness and claws gripped her. She screamed and pushed away frantically. Her body shook and she sobbed. So terrified, so defenseless. Those bloody eyes begging the one who made her desperate.

They weren't claws, they were arms, powerful arms that caressed and smoothed her ratty hair. "It's all right, little dove." The words felt so true, so comforting. She leaned into the chest, not knowing what else to do.

Erik inhaled her warmth, feeling himself grow indestructible. Feeling her weak in his arms, how he held complete control; it filled him with sick, beautiful satisfaction, resurging his insatiable desire to gain more.

Each tangle of hair caught in his fingertips, and gobs of follicles attached to his black cloak. His voice rang silently in those porcelain ears, his sweet breath tickling her face; the lullaby powerful and burning, mournful and remembered.

"Let speech disappear into

Silence,

Silence,"

She started to pull out of his comforts, but he reeled her in; the caught prize he refused to release, despite her struggles.

He squeezed her to his chest, tighter, tighter, until her bones cut into him and screams of pain pierced the air. She was released, favoring the broken hand he had upset.

He fled the room like someone being chased.

The sharp pain subsided slowly as she desperately tried to calm herself. She winced and hyperventilated as her finger bones cut against the muscles in her hand. She regained herself and rose to what surrounded her. Mist seemed to settle as condensation on her bare arms, and water streamed stilly through a rusted gate.

The organ was rustic and attractive; her stomach felt sick at the idea of touching it; her heart fluttered at the need to.

She sat back at the piano bench, her good hand smoothing the keys out, dreaming up melodies and notes she couldn't play. Her pointer finger was the first to disrupt the uniformity of silence. The others followed slowly, as she played individual key by individual key, a simple sample of her most complex thoughts.

She was hungry for music, incapacitated from knowing too little about it. He could teach her, he would teach her. Last night he dreamt of it, he held nothing to lose. If she left like Christine he would be in no better state. All it would do is give him more conviction in his suicide attempts.

He slinked silently back into the room, hearing a simple tune capture his attention. He watched her play, not sure if anger or curiosity felt stronger. Those personal keys which had melted into him now clawed at by a beggar. But the core of it was original, and precious. The song's master losing sense of reality as she played. She looked celestial.

Evangeline felt glares on her and her fingers stuttered. She turned to see the unknown eyes stabbing her. The voice that matched them was thoughtful. "Are you hungry?" the brass vocals seemed to smooth away her tenseness. Her stomach growled. "Yes."

He led her to the dining area swiftly, the table already holding a collection of fruit, eggs and bread. She got through an apple and slice of bread before getting sick. She clutched her sloshing stomach and asked for the bathroom. Erik rushed her in the direction of it, feeling her tiny build tremble as he pushed her bony spine.

Her cheeks began to bleed again as the pressure from fighting back her gagging broke the wounds open. Her meals from yesterday and today were expelled; he heard her body reject them from outside the bathroom. Erik felt upset that she was 2 days weaker than need be.

Her skinny legs left the room stiffly, and she didn't dare look at him. That shame, that shame she felt disgusted him. He had fed her too much, and her stomach was so shrunken that she was unable to hold it in her starving figure. Yet she apologized for his mistake.

"I am sorry." A small voice peeped out from her and she felt small and stupid. The kindest person she had ever met was now probably regretting having ever bestowed compassion upon her. Or was he an angel? Just an angel having regrets about his saintly duties.

He seemed lost in thought as she looked towards him for some sort of response. All she saw was gray, sharp eyes analyzing the floor. "never apologize again" the words sounded in the room as she sat gawking at him.

"Little dove, whose impertinence

Made you so shy?

Never would I hurt you,

Not ever I.

Let me in,

Let me in,

Let me hear you."

She grabbed towards his hand, receiving it with rapidity about her, and spoke.

"You are my friend, and the only I will ever have truly, I wish I could sing to you every note you want to hear. Every lyric that is worthy of your golden ears, in every other way I will never hold back to you. I will tell the answer to any question, do the duty to any request."

"But little Evangeline, that is all l request of you. That is all I ask of you. Will all I ask be denied?" again, he thought.

"I am not good enough for you angel."

"Do not defy me when I ask of you something we both wish for. Let me hear your voice again."

"At the expense of your ears, as you said once before?"

"Angels fall from the light of god little dove, and I have lied to you. Sing with me as though you have forgotten all the words I've said, all the words anyone has ever said. Sing like a person truly free."

Her chest lifted as she breathed in the silver night and candle smoke. She was his the moment her voice lifted the room, the passion stronger than she ever was.

"Far from the thrones

blood has deemed mine,

far from nobility I am denied,"

Anger spewed into his essence, a sour combination that was bonded with desire. He began to forget the world, what she looked like. What he looked like.

"Far from it's home,

The outcast will die,

Far from love,

This fool that dreamed,

Will die"

He walked to her, his lips dry and burning. Before she knew what was happening her cheek bones were digging into his warm callused hands. The two gray skins warming each other.

He was gasping at the closeness, his own bravery, and the conflicting cold air and warm body heat. He needed to; he needed just a second kiss in life. Those eyes looked bewildered, pressing deeper into his mercury irises. Who had been the first to kiss him? He was forgetting the world as his mind twisted with admiration of her.

It was Christine. No. it couldn't happen. She would run, and leave him half whole. If he was lucky enough to be half the man he was now if that happened.

His dark red lips scathed her sallow cheeks.

"You will be great, and I will hear music from your lips every day from now. I will teach you. The world will never find you, never harm you."

His voice rolled like honey through her ears, dripping with sadistic hungers.

"I am your angel of music."

Her heart beat irregularly.


	9. Chapter 9

Evangeline's bones began to recede from her skin and her wounds healed. Erik was proud of it.

Her body was less squared, soft even. Each of her cheeks were pink and supple, her lips scarlet. The eyes were what pleased him most, however. The thick dark eyelashes that surrounded the two bright green perceptives. The two smiling eyes, that looked at him like...like; it didn't matter.

She walked towards him now, and he couldn't help but look at that perfect hourglass, her rags looking like high fashion against it. There were no mirrors here, and she had no clue at her own perfection. How unassuming she was, how he craved her… her music.

Yet she, despite his urges, sang very little. Her being trained to be reserved, and quiet, though not so naturally austere as one might think. As he might have thought if he hadn't heard that…eccentric, delicate voice that scrawled passionate symphonies into the air, untrained and imperfect. So beautiful.

She was the listener and writer more often than the singer. Every lyric she wrote he found was a puzzle, an intrigue. Like pieces of her past he could form a bigger picture from. He didn't dare ask her a thing about the cruel past life. He didn't dare upset his little Evangeline, and that perfect uncorrupted mind.

Her main goal in life it seemed, was his comfort. He was fully amused by the oddity of if, the ironic nature of the idea; a beautiful girl concerned for him, cleaning up after him like a maid. Or a wife.

She had reached him now, and smiled up at those eyes. What genius was untold and unheard yet, behind those eyes, inside that mind? What intelligence festered and grew into witty poems and dark thoughts?

He smiled back at her softly, adoringly. She was saving him. Her presence was sunshine; he was growing, and thriving in the light. Christine was a candle compared to a star.

Perhaps it was best not associate the two.

"What is it, ma belle?"

Her calmness was distilled when he spoke, that tiny heart beating like thunder.

"I was going to give you a song I wrote, I was wondering if you could improve the notes."

His smile grew stronger, and he chuckled slightly at the request. She was very basic in her music notes, and left descriptions and insertions cluttered about on the paper. He took the paper and her hand to the organ. That soft creamy hand.

Her eyes closed and he stared thoughtlessly at her gentle face before starting. What he created from the roots of her ideas was zealous, and fine. If only she would learn the notes to music, she would truly become special, become genius. She held all the components of a fire except the match. This was not even a third of what she heard in her head, of that he was sure and right.

Her jaw dropped at the absolute beauty in the music, the noise that embraced her deepest ideals and feelings. It sounded loving, and tender in her ears. He heard the same thing.

The organ stopped playing and he turned towards her, the mask looking uncomfortable against his jawline.

"Will you sing for me?"

She contemplated, thinking of reasons why she could refuse him. But she had said them all it seemed, and for at least this case was forced to vocalize.

Her oval face nodded, and he began to play again.

"Please, call upon me,

I will come,

If you go far my dear,

I will follow.

What is the way?

To say what I need?

What is the way?

To tell you my feelings?"

The music sank away from their ears and she spoke, "It's not finished," she looked down at her hands, the stunning flushed face confusing him.

He realized he had clasped onto one of them, and reddened himself. He pulled her down to the piano seat, trying to distract her from the physical contact.

"Let's work on it together dove" She flashed a white smile at him, and he fiddled with a few chords. They were 10 minutes into their work she was kissing his cheek and skipping off. It was so abrupt, and unexpected, and his reflexes seemed to be shut off. What was this sudden confidence in her? Everything was again heightened, and he was grinning like a silly child. He chased after her even more so like one.

She hid in the kitchen cupboard, and beamed when she heard his exposed footsteps shuffling around desperate for her. She chewed on her bottom red lip, trying desperately to suppress her smile. Light cut the food cabinet open, and there he was shoveling her giggling body in his arms. He could help but laugh at her. Erik was human and happy when she smiled; laughter became more common in her company.

He carried her to the main room, and sat on the piano bench cradling his gem, her tiny body leaning into his chest, comforting herself and him. He felt her body shake with giggles.

It was so much better than when she used to shake, when she was sick, and starving, and each beautiful part of her so dulled.

He smoothed out her cheeks with his thumb and chuckling himself said "What is so funny Eva?"

"Nothing is funny, I just feel so happy!"

"What is it that makes you so happy? If it's the food I'll have to make it taste worse. Goodness knows we wouldn't want you smiling or anything."

Her laughing up roared and she hugged his waist

"You do!"

"Me?"

That perfect complexion drew still, and meaningful.

"You."

His hands pressed against her shoulder blades, pulling her to his face, up from her comfort against him. His mind shut off, and his body was desperate. Her forearms we're the boundary between their chests, his breath strong against her collarbone. He stared into the green sea, swimming in those eyes. He pressed her face closer to his, her milky skin like heaven.

He kissed her lips, tasting the bloody color of them.


	10. Chapter 10

My dearest readers,

I apologize for the disruption in schedule. I assure you that as previously done, I will be maintaining my 24 hour update deadline. Due to some unprecedented events this week, and absolute exhaustion from my weird sleep schedule, I have been unable to, and apologize deeply. As I have once said, your reviews are most heartily appreciated. They help me not only improve my story, but motivate me to write it just as well, PLEASE keep writing them. Thank you to bloodwolfearthdragon for encouraging me to be a sane person and get some rest!

Sincerely,

Your Angel

* * *

That kiss was riveting, the smoothness of their lips slicing. They had forgotten everything the world was. It was blank, bright and spinning their minds. Her fragile body was anything but similar to his ragged frame, yet in every way it was meant for him. Two of the same creature melting into black swirls of cloak and white mask.

They unlocked, and breathed into a new air. A new world.

Her purple eyelids blinked slowly and rose to the factor that had changed it all. It stirred something she had never felt.

Those rough hands scraped against her rosy cheeks and their noses so lightly touched. Those once piercing gray eyes; they were now soft, and half tamed. The wildness shone through soon enough in better lighting.

Her hips seemed strangled in the lock of one of his wrists, her cheeks cradled by the other.

"Evangeline. Eva."

Her name whispered through his lips like bird wings, silent, and graceful. His thick black hair dripped from his face like a stream of ash, her tiny hands swooping them behind his eyes, tasting the picture with every sense.

Soon the black strands were clenched in her hands, her lips ripping at his perfect ones. His pale neck stroked by her pearly fingertips.

He pulled his red lips from hers, and planted them on her collarbone. She hugged his neckline and kissed the top of his head, dreaming of the things he thought about, delighting in his hold.

"Erik" she muffled into his hair as he glided down her neck kiss by kiss.

"I love you."

He receded from her collar and grasped tighter to her waist with his palms.

"My little Eva…" he said it dreamily, lost in their passions, unable to describe how he truly felt. Frustrated by the lack of words in the world to describe it.

"I love your soul, and your mind, and your body. I will love every bit of anything that is yours or has been. I love everything you touch."

She touched him.

Everything beautiful about her filled him with guilt and awe for ever bringing such loveliness to these depths. Yet he had never done it. She had come here willingly, gracefully, like the angel she was. The angel of the moon, and stars, and candles. All the things that illuminated the night and coincided with it, needing it as much as it desperately needed her. He tasted her shoulders, hungering for every particle of her, any inkling of her.

His silver eyes began to sizzle against her skin, her own naïve, and innocent, yet feeling the same hunger. He pulled the mercury sockets to her eyes, and watched them close and lean into his chest. That fragile body, trusting and warm. He kissed her eyelids, and soon after they fluttered open like butterfly wings.

"Past the point,

Of no,

Return."

It was sweeping and black, and the world was swallowed in memories. The blindness of love receded as logic sawed into his head. He clenched onto her fine figure with his talons. "Your too beautiful." It killed him. She would never love him. She couldn't love him.

He fought her grasp and all the warmth receded from the room. A cold fear burning in her eyes as hatred erupted in his.

"You hold sympathies with me,

Yet little does my dove know,

little does my dove see,

That I'm the monster in her dreams,

Clawing at that unflawed mind,

the monster in her dreams.

I'm the bad guy.

I'm the monster,

Murderer,"

She flinched with shock at the word.

"and torturer.

In my past,

I've burned in hell,

As I deserved,

Ensnare an Angel?

What malevolence,

I would need,

Towards that creature,

I adore."

Her pink lips urged beauty from her lips, and lyrics formed to his common amazement.

"Murderer,

Torturer,

In your past,

You've lived in hell?"

He nodded in complete weak shame.

"Then what is present tense,

If you cannot but help,

And live in it.

Is this hell?

Or is this heaven?"

His sweet voice clambered against hers,

"Is this hell?

Or is it heaven?

What are the words,

If you have yet to speak?

You are mine,

And I am forever yours,

Will you live for me,

Or die for yourself?"

A painful burn seemed to verge on agony within them,

"So bind to me,

We will be,

Two feathers,

Of a twisted wing.

Will you pass the point,

Of no return?

Will you do the deed,

Will we be born again?

Loved for once?

Love me once?"

He ran towards her, sweeping her feverish skin into his arms, his heart thrumming in his chest, against the weight of her nuzzling cheeks in his arms. He strided towards the great swan, pausing at the door to it.

No, no she wasn't her. No. She could never be her.

He looked down at his dove, her wide and gentle eyes wounding him to her obliviousness. He walked with her slowly, cradling her body and looking down at those eyes with pity and pure love.

She would never have to choose like she did. She would never go through what Christine had. He would never let her be blind to what she is accepting.

They made it to his piano bench, his slow movements signaling defeat, and depression at what he had to do to save her from him. He stroked her porcelain cheeks, minding how delicate they really were. He eased her out of his grasp slowly onto the piano seat, where he kissed her hands, and held them as tears flowed down his face, bitterness rolling in his symphonies.

"If you do not fear the monster,

He must make you fear the monster."

He removed the white mask from his face, and one of his many tears hit the floor as gravity shattered the smooth white porcelain mask.

It was the color of the delicate cheeks that would never again accept a monster's caress.


	11. Chapter 11

Her eyes went blank, her lips thinned, her stomach flipped. She cried. But she didn't cry because of what he had shown her, only because of things he hadn't seen. Her fingers clasped to her lips to contain the nausea. She heard sobbing, and fled the room weak with anxiety.

Tears rolled down both his perfect and abhorrent halves. She had loved him. She had loved him and he had done this to her. God... he had done this. He slumped off of his piano seat and bawled, his strength receding as soon as it had come. She knew now. Noises of her pain crept into his sensitive ears, and leaked down his raw eyes.

He was sitting alone, crumpled on the floor and screaming in agony.

That noise dug into her mourning cells, that noise which was now causing her to rip at the fabric around her waist. Through her scraps she clawed until she had torn a hole through them.

"Innocence lost,

Unprotected,

Naivety gone,

From my hands,

Sorrow stolen and rammed,

Thrust into my living cavity,

It hurts to hear her pain,

Missing that pure,

Naivety."

The perfection of his voice was gone, and it was shambling and scraping its way through his tonsils like glass.

Her bare stomach was in every sense humiliating to her, but she couldn't hurt him, she couldn't let his pain flood into him again. She walked silently to his side, undetected. Her arms and bare abdomen warmed him as she wrapped around his black distorted form from behind. She kissed his shoulders and whispered into his ears.

"Am I still your little Eva?

Am I still, your little dove?

Would you accept someone,

Who has fled your perfection?"

His rough voice hoarsely questioned her.

"You accept me?"

"always."

He was too afraid to turn to her, to embrace her; to reveal his disgusting face once again and scare away his little bird, inflict the same reaction.

"I never ran from you, I ran because my past is in those mutilations."

He was shaking against her body, reaching blindly for her hands to calm him.

"Turn so I can see you."

His eyes were watering, and he hesitated for as long as he could to face her.

His perfect lips were veined with scars on one half, scars that looked like lashings had born them. Knife cuts created caverns in his complexion, and burns decorated the entire half. His nose and eyes the only constant beauty on his face, his disheveled black hair framing the grim picture. She saw his pain, his traumas, and his emotion in that face.

Her own perfect appearance stared into his, and his tears plopped into her pinkish palms. She cradled the disfigurement like a child between her small hands, neither pity nor fear staining her features like the rest who had seen him. Sadness was the scars she bore.

She was tearing up and he stared at the floor in humiliation.

"No my heart, never feel shame. Never feel shame for what anyone has done to you."

He stared up at her, surprised. She saw deeper than what the rest did. The rest saw that face as his fault, as his own evilness. Not the evils of others, not the demons of his past. No, his ugliness was his error, and to the world it meant that he was immoral from the start, that he deserved this.

She kissed his lips desperately, and he was shocked by the affection.

Those perfect pink lips melting away pain, and fear and weakness. He kissed her back, deeply into her jaws, pushing her willing body onto the floor, focusing only on that kiss.

She broke away to breath, and to trace his cheekbones.

"You have to see my scars my love. If I accept you accept me."

Confusion laced into his eyes, and she saw it. How could something so beautiful be scarred?

He lay himself down beside her, staring into her eyes in question. She held his coarse hands into her own, and led them to her stomach. He felt horror stream into him, and lifted himself to look at her torments.

Her entire stomach had been sliced open. Scars rattled themselves into his vision, blankets of them discoloring her beautiful body. He was crying at them, furious even more than sad.

He screamed like the twisted, hellish man he had once been, and was now. The vengeful sufferer seeking to smite.

"Who has done this to you?! Who has done this to you!? God damn them, god damn them! I'll slit their throats!"

The roar shook the entire opera house, and terrified her.

She was shaking beneath his shouts, fearing him, fearing _them._ Her chest was heaving in distress and sorrow. She rolled over to cover herself again. She felt herself growing sick and tried forcing herself to her feet as he screamed hatred into existence. She was running dizzily away from it all, teeter tottering towards someplace else. Her frame was slipping, and her head blurred. All she could see was the lake, and her feet giving way towards it.

They slid together into the frigid waters, and her head was smacked into the rocky edge. Blackness, splashing, and water filled her senses as she became unconscious.

He couldn't hear her dying body hit the water past his screams.


	12. Chapter 12

He screamed until his voice was raspy and the breath in his lungs had left him. His dove, that gentle, sweet little dove. He stared at the walls of his hell and let the tears roll into his gaping mouth. They were salty, and bitter, and burning. His little dove.

The scars had been deep, and with that painful. His dove, his Eva, the world has been so cruel to both of them. He traced his own lips, remembering the feeling of hers. His sweet Eva, his sweet and tortured Eva. He would make them pay. Whoever had done this to them. Whoever had harmed his beautiful angel.

His body shook and his firm jaws sealed themself in fury. Those silver eyes seemed clouded by twisted, malevolent thoughts. He cherished his ideas of punishment for them, for those sick bastards who dared to touch her. The lips she saw as perfect grinned sickly.

He shook away the pleasure of their torments from his mind. What about her? His angel, somewhere cold, and crying, somewhere feeling ashamed and alone. Not for long, he decided. She would never be alone again. They would never plague her thoughts, and torment her with the memory of their wickedness. He would kill those thoughts, warm her coldness, kiss away her sorrows, write with her sweet music. Marry her.

His feet slid down the hall to every door, ripping them open and calling for his angel. Stopping in hesitation at the last, the swan bed. Each room the same, empty as he once was, before she filled him. The cave felt colder, and he felt sick. Was his dove gone? Had she fled the darkness finally, flown to the garish light? He ran back towards the lake room, towards his organ, towards his nightmares.

He paced the floor, and began to weep again.

Shards of music broke from his sobs.

"No one,

Would listen,

No one but her,

Heard as the outcast hears"

He moaned with each footstep until every noise in his body was trapped, every emotion but panic withheld. There was blood on the floor. On the floor by the lake.

It took no thought or pauses for him to dive into the icy death after her. It wasn't courage, it wasn't love, it wasn't any sort of thought. It was automatic. It was self-preservation. If she was gone, it wouldn't be the same as Christine. This was so completely different; this wasn't infatuation, or lust. This was, in its truest form half of his soul, all the great things he could be. Half of his soul dying in the black coldness it was meant to die in. He was the other half that wouldn't survive.

The frozen water burned him, and he was out of air. His head was hurting, his lips were turning blue. His heart beat was only for her. He should die down here. If he didn't find her he would die down here, Down in the darkness with her before he would ever see the light alone.

A red web caught into his hand, and he dragged it towards him. Her limp body was in his arms. She was angelic with no gravity to press her down, those purple eye lids shining in the dim black sea, the red lips dark. He pulled her to the surface, and gasped for air as he did. She sat still.

He swam for the bank like a hurricane, pushing her body roughly onto the rocky floor. He climbed on top of her frame, his black cloak heavy against both of them. His white hands pressed onto her chest , his mouth pounding air into her lungs, his tears plopping onto her blue lips. He listened to her heart, and whimpered. It wasn't beautiful and beating like birds wings. It was dead.

He pounded, and breathed and sobbed and cradled her. He pressed harder onto her ribcage, and his CPR changed to unreturned kisses. It was so sudden that his future changed. That his world collapsed.

It soon regained itself.

Water poured from her mouth and she was choking on it. He sat stunned and smiling, and acted swiftly as to pull the straggly red threads from her coughing lips. As she gasped for breaths he clasped to her neck, and kissed at her cheeks desperately. He laughed and cried seeing the redness return to them.

Her body shook and she crawled her way from the water edge, she herself sobbing. He frowned and walked after her, lifting her body from the hard floor into his softness. They were soaking, and chilled to the bone.

"E-ee-rik"

She was trembling and shaking, and the word was beautiful all the same from her lips.

He moved their bodies towards the bathroom, hot water streamed into the tub. He sat her down onto the floor, and she began to pull at the ties of her dress immediately, those delicate numb fingers unable to destroy the knots.

The gentleman avoided eye contact. This was something he couldn't help her with.

"Erik, pl-ee-ease"

I guess he would need to.

His own cold fingers were much more tactile against her strings, ripping at them and producing results quickly. Her gown slipped down abruptly, and her bare back was white and inviting. He left the room silently as she lifted herself into the water.

"Wait,"

She had hardly whispered the words, but he ran to them. His figure lay dark and frozen in the doorway.

"You saved me." Her red eyes analyzed him from the tub, the greenness perpetrating his strength.

His mouth was dry, and his skin shook as he stared at the floor. All he could do was nod at her.

She frowned at his discomfort, and began to cough uncontrollably, her throat raw. He was there at her side without a concept of what he was doing, holding her hand for support.

Breath filled her lungs, and she stared at him. It was only because of him she was here, breathing and happy. It was only because of him she could live on after _those_ memories. She smiled.

Panic swept over his face as he scooped the marred half of his face from sight with his hand. He had forgotten his mask. "I'm sorry" His pale cheeks were red, and she kissed them.

She pulled his hand away from his face, and kissed all the calluses on his palm.

He shook at her touch, and continued shaking from the icy draft.

"You're cold," her velvet voice sounded in his ears and he savored each concerned note.

He traced the lines of her sweet face, and grinned softly as he reached her lips. Her eyes closed as she felt his cold mouth press hers. She pulled the buttons of his shirt until his bare chest felt the wafting air.

He watched her, feeling more surprised at each button. How could she even want this? He closed his eyes and stammered, "Wha-," he cleared his throat "what are you doing?"

"You're cold,"

"But-"

"I love you," it was those words that sealed away all clear thinking in his head.

The warm water washed over him and he trembled no longer.

Past the point of no return.


	13. Chapter 13

He woke with her fragile body in his arms. They seemed so different, his scarred, muscled tissues, her softness, her perfection. But with her, he felt perfect too. It had all changed. In a single night the world was different, the light more inviting, gentility instead of ferocity curdling in his veins. The lion had become the lamb. He nuzzled her hair, smelling her sweetness, feeling the silky strands of red tickle his mouth.

Her chest rose and fell in rhythm. The pattern was inspirational, and music notes flowed into his head to the beat of her breathing. He was shocked to hear a sadness in the melody, something twisted and beautiful like his love, but laced with her dejected undertones. The scars on her stomach rose to his thoughts once again, and his physique tightened. She woke up.

He pulled the hair off of her neck as she turned to look at him. The strange fear on her face softened as she saw him, a tint of worry resting in her wide eyes. His smile vanished it away.

He loved her. He had known her for three months, but he forgot the world before it all. He loved the way her nose crinkled when she teased him, her dimples, her laugh. He loved her goodness, and her heart. He loved most how her eyes told him everything, and nothing in that spiraling green gaze.

Evangeline; Even her name was beautiful. The very definition of it a good omen.

He felt her hand reach towards his face, he reflexively grabbed at his mask to protect it from prying fingers, Christine had been the last to surprise him, to scold his hideousness unprepared. Her name sloshed in his stomach uneasily. He felt urgently, yet there was nothing to grab at, it was gone, and as memories of the day before collected in his head, he had not worn it then either.

Yet she smiled. The peculiar little flower that thrived in places no flower grew before.

Her tiny hips scooted off the bed; she wrapped herself in a white night gown and walked towards the kitchen, silent and angelic. He lay still in their bed. Yes it was no longer just his. Nothing in this place was just his anymore. He traced the warm indent she had made into the mattress.

She whisked the eggs and flour expertly. She had been the maid in someone's house once, washed the china, swept the floors, cooked. She poured the stirred mixture into another, the idea of crepes for breakfast seemed even more pleasant to her as she made them, and she hoped it would be pleasing to him too.

The pan sizzled as the mixture solidified from the temperature. She sat watching the batter brown, thinking of all the things she had done, all the things she would never have to do again, and all the things she would do here with him. She started with the obvious, the fact that she would never be neglected, or abused, the fact that she would wake up to the sound of music. The fact that she would sleep in the arms of its conductor at night.

The devil she spoke of had swallowed her up. His hulking frame hugging her waist as she cooked, his permanent rose scent more delightful than the sweet, warm breakfast in her nose.

She smiled and blushed as she flipped the crepes. He kissed her cheek and sat down at the table. She heaped a plate with the food, and moved on to whip the cream for them, and slice berries. The world had changed in a day, her entire life leading up to this 24 hours.

Her head began to throb, and she grew dizzy as she rubbed the sensitive spot where she had smacked it. Everything from yesterday seemed to smack her, adrenaline had killed any discomfort she might have felt yesterday.

"Eva?" He was beside her, as he seemed to always be.

"I'm fine, just have a headache."

He frowned. He hadn't even thought about the accident. He was too preoccupied with what happened after it.

"Go sit down, I can finish this" his voice was music whether he sang or not. She shook her head.

"You can't whip cream" Her nose crinkled, just like he loved.

"Well we will see, because your not doing it. Besides you already did the hard part anyways, the crepes are done." By now he had pulled chair near her place at the counter, and assumed her position himself. He was attempting to simultaneously stir cream and hold hands with her, until he gave up and poured the soupy cream on top of the berry crepes.

She kissed his knuckles in between laughs. "You fop!"

He laughed, and his demented past seemed like a joke suddenly, like it didn't even matter that the real fop had stolen his 'true love' so long ago. He knew now his angel was sitting and looking at him like he was the sun.

"I knew this man named Raoul once," He smiled, articulating the words in his head, avoiding the dangerous territories this story could get him into. "He had perfectly combed and styled chestnut hair that flipped at the ends, always very dainty; and he danced just like a woman at the masquerade ball with-"he hesitated, but regained his control and laughed to shrug it off. "Well, anyways, his hands were very well manicured to say the least."

She beamed at him and he was reassured of himself.

"I have a brother named Raoul you know, it almost makes it twice as funny."

"Who is your brother my dove?"

He laughed and looked into her eyes. His smile straightening as he recognized the face he had seen them in before.

"Raoul de Chagny"

She smiled as though their happiness had not just died from her words. He was not free of the past after all. He vengeful and vicious in a moment, and the phantom re surged within his bitter veins. Yes, in a day everything had changed.

let it be war upon them both.


	14. Chapter 14

My dearest readers,

Hoping your holiday was wonderful, and I'm very much looking forward to the story I have planned for you all. I'm so happy some of you have followed or favorited my story as well as me, and your comments are just, so fantastic, I love them. I really hope I can give you a good story to read, you guys. I'm a super big fan of you all:) I'm hoping to get one or more chapters up tomorrow, so please stay tuned:). I'm thinking I will changed the synopsis for the story as well today, I'm hoping to get some more readers. Oh, and I was wondering what you guys thought of the photo I took for the story cover a couple weeks back? Thank you all, for everything, you make my day whenever I get a comment, follow, or anything really.

(Sorry that was...a super long rant.)

Sincerely,

Your Angel

* * *

The warmth of her presence receded. "Get out." His voice shook as he said it silently, in shock almost. The true phantom was _him. _Whether he was here physically or in spirit he stole away his world, and his happiness always. He looked from his lap to her, to her hand which he still held. He ripped his claws out of his tender palms. Her face grew concerned as it should have.

He got up as his body began to shake, as his face began to redden with rage. "GET OUT!" the pitch was unrecognized by her. She sat trembling, and frail. Symptoms of a feeling he had once wanted to cure from her. Fear.

Her stomach grew sick but she fought her discomfort, and her tears. She walked towards him against every sense of preservation. Grabbing his hand and disarming him momentarily. The hand slid out of hers all too quickly though.

"Order your fine horses now,

Hands at the level of your eye,

Nothing can save you now except perhaps,

Raoul."

"Erik, what have I done? I don't understand." The tears rolled freely down her rose colored lips and warm cheeks. He couldn't see her beauty any longer. All he saw was _him. _

"Go now!

Go Now

and leave me!"

"Erik, Raoul, you don't understand—"

It sounded like death to hear her say his name against his. It sounded like the last girl to have killed him. He had to stop this all. She had to leave, she had to go. He should have gotten rid of her from the start. She had to go.

"Please, please Erik, just let me speak to—"

She gasped as he slapped her in the face.

"Go now!

Go now!

And leave me."

His voice low, and soft and hissing at her like the demon he was. Like the demon the phantom was.

He slithered away twisted and furious, yet silent and plotting as he moved. She sunk to the floor and sobbed.

What had she done? To deserve him to begin with and to lose him in the end.

The world was a mystery and she was sick of it all. She clasped to her wounded face and thought of when he had kissed her cheeks. Such a short and long time it seemed he had.

She was choking on her grief, the words and tears trapped by their own density. Her voice cackled as she tried to breathe.

She looked around herself. Had it always been this dark? Had she never seen that no light could be welcomed in this sickness? How she wanted to heal him of any bad thought or feeling. All she did was rip open past wounds in them both.

The berry crepes steamed on the counter, and her mouth watered. But everything in this place was his once again, and she was to leave him and his generosity like a hunted animal.

She checked the hall she was going to enter into. It was clear and lonely. She walked towards her makeshift room near the organ, and clawed from the shelf her belongings. His footsteps thudded in her direction, she panicked and managed to only decorate herself with a wool cloak he had given her.

No she could never see him again. She would be gone before he could get to her. Before she melted and lost her will to do anything.

She ran to a passage way and shuddered. She didn't have a clue how to escape from this place. She didn't know anything. She didn't do anything. "Oh my god, what have I done?" She groaned while tears plopped onto the stone floor.

She heard his feet speed up at the noise. The Gondola came into view. She could get out that way, it was bound to lead her someplace. She ran towards the boat, her cloak flying like birds wings. She stood and rowed as silently as she could. Past the only good memories in her life she rowed.

He entered the room to find her few clothes strewn from their place on his music shelf, too preoccupied to see the gondola heading towards the gate.

"Eva?" he called her name like he used to. Like he still loved her. Tears dripped down her body and she ignored the weak feeling in her legs. She was trapped. There was no lever here. She plunged into the water in haste as she located it. Her freedom was across the lake with him, and she had to beat him to it.

"Eva?!" He called again desperately as he heard the splash and saw the gondola. She waded around the deep end she had fallen into before, and moved as quickly as her frail legs could carry her towards the lever, emotional pain streaming down her face.

What had he done?

He ran towards the lever as she shuffled to it. He couldn't let her go. He wasn't going to let _him _take her. Erik was swift, but Evangeline was determined. They reached it at the same time and the primal nature of Erik shone in her eyes. she saw his twisted, wickedness, in the candle light. She saw a part that could care but was never nurtured enough to. A part that regretted murder, and suffering and fear. That propensity to be good, wasted by the past he clung to.

All he saw was the red mark his hand had made on her face.

She pulled the lever and fled before he returned to his senses, leaving the world blurred by his and her tears. Erik lost the sun and the stars in one moment. Two people ripped from his arms, little to the knowledge of both the father and mother of what grew inside Evangeline's tiny frame.

He watched her row away sobbing as he sat mute and in pain.

What had he done?


	15. Chapter 15

**I personally recommend reading this while listening to Adagio in G minor, it just makes the whole thing deliciously dramatic. **

* * *

The surface shocked her unaccustomed eyes. Daylight pierced into them and her stomach flipped as reality sunk in. She shuddered in the cold air of February, looking more and more like the girl Erik had met months before. Looking pathetic, and sickly in the harshness of daylight.

She collapsed into the snow, falling onto the road like she wanted to die there. She did want to die there on his doorstep, with her ear pressed to the earth as it was now, hoping she might hear his lullabies floating from the depths of hell into her ears to make her sleep. To make her sleep and dream of him.

Erik raced up the halls towards the servant side entrance. His feet quick and quiet up the stone stairs he had not ascended in so long, back to the daylight that betrayed and beguiled him. His Angel, part of the bloodline of beasts and devils, related to his demons. He growled and smacked his fists into the stone wall he walked against. Why was it he chased her? All he was chasing was the same pain her own sibling had inflicted upon him, memories of Christine, and fears of solitude. But perhaps it was that fear that provoked his running feet in her fleeing direction. The common ground they shared. Neither wanted to be without the other. All Erik wanted was to be without _him. _

Cold air sliced into her lungs. Evangeline sobbed in her mattress of snow, her beautiful face distorted in bouts of emotional and physical pain.

* * *

The door seemed so close now. He carried himself quickly, his plotting mind calculating what might have been her purpose here, if not for love. Did she even care for him? Was it Raoul who sent her?

He hurried his pace as he realized there was no logic to anything besides her loving him. Raoul had gotten what he wanted, he didn't need to toy with Erik any longer, and Evangeline would never tell him if that was the case, at least, not if she didn't start to care about him. But there was a question that gave him headaches. Why would she be a beggar, if she was sister to one of the most wealthy citizens in Paris, or even France?

There the entrance to the kitchen was before him, the only other door he would need to pass would be the way-thoughts were disrupted as a section of his decrepit building plunged on top of him. Blackness filled his eyes, thoughts, and feelings as lumps of brick and wood rendered him unconscious.

* * *

She rose from her place on the ground. Whatever happiness she had left, she left there. There was no reason for her to continue, just a want to. Just a stupid, cowardly, want to live standing. A stupid want to not die at his feet like a mangy dog.

"Fatherless am I,

Motherless, I am,

I commit no crime,

Yet I am punished always,

Joy was never mine,

I hope he finds some anyway,

Lovely Erik,"

He woke to a voice, like honey, like birds flying away. There was no bitterness in the voice, it was pure benevolence. Angelic. He called out to groggily; "Christine don't, Christine," He sat disabled, and listening without any sense in his head.

"Die a happy man,

Lovely Erik,

I could never blame you,

For the things that I am,

Die a happy man,

My loveliest Erik,

Thank you for your kindness,

Thank you for your love."

She was walking into the nearby streets by the time he regained his complete consciousness, disappearing into the crowds as she had once been so gifted at. He scrambled from underneath rubble, and ran out the side door.

"Evangeline!" He screamed it. Erik ran faster to the corner, to the streets filled with people, cupping his face, mask-less.

"Evangeline!" Pain rolled onto his face, and soon he was cupping both sides of his face, crying, and attracting attention on the corner of the alleyway. People dropped coins at his feet. One person just watched him, and sat with pity in her eyes. He didn't seem to see her at all. See the familiar face he had loved once.

He ran back into the opera, clambering clumsily over the hill of bricks that had fallen on him, running towards the roof like a mad beast.

Past the dressing room he had restored, past the burnt hallways, and stage, past his memories, up the stairs. Into the light like a child being born. Like a man being born again.

He struggled his way closer to the top, his body revealing the blow he had taken. The world was brighter from the height of the roof, but he couldn't look up. He was looking down on them all, looking down on his city, looking for his dove.

He belted her name like it was the last words he would ever say. Where would she go? How would she survive the winter, unshielded from the world? Oh god. What had he done.

He sang out to the crowds, in his divine language.

"Evangeline,

I've hurt you,

Forgive me,

Evangeline,

Return to me,

Forgive me,

Come back to me,

I love you,

Evangeline"

The crowds shuffled around after the first line, dismissing the voice as that of a crazy man with talent. And perhaps that was what he was. All except one continued on. It was Christine Daae who stopped in the alleys to see him, to listen to her angel of music in the busy streets of Paris, calling to his own. It was Evangeline? That was a pretty name. Yet Christine scolded herself at the thought, what was pretty was not always so perfect, as she had so bitterly come to recognize.


	16. Chapter 16

Christine made her way through the streets graceful, and glowing, as she commonly was. She managed to spread her message through the walkways of Paris quietly, and dignified, whispering for the location a girl that was upset. Several whispers back led her to an alleyway, where she targeted her prize most instantly for the wavy red hair that streamed down her back like a target. She broke from the crowded side walk and moved towards her, graceful as if she was dancing.

"Are you alright?" Her voice was sweet and level, as a queen might sound, or a higher power might talk to a lesser. Evangeline's back was shaking uncontrollably, and she sat shivering from two types of coldness, an emptiness eating at her, and a breeze that killed.

"Mademoiselle?" Evangeline calmed herself; she didn't need the world to know her troubles. She didn't need pity. Her red eyes gave it to her anyways as Christine recognized the look only tears brought you. She knew better than to inquire so soon on it.

"Where are your shoes?" Evangeline was taken aback, and stared down at her bare feet in the snow. "Come with me, you will get sick like this." Her pale hands met Christine's warm gloved ones. Evangeline examined Christine, indulging herself in that pleasant appearance. "Are you an Angel?" she questioned. Christine paused in her walking to turn to her. She smiled, and spoke with a slight bitterness "Angels are much better than silly housewives." She frowned realizing how cold the poor girl looked. "What is your name?" "Evangeline." Erik's Evangeline, she was sure now. She was so childlike, and yet they were the same age. The mother in her emerged; the mother she was quite unable to ever be.

"My name is Christine. You know Evangeline, I think I will buy myself some new gloves, would you join me?"

"Yes, if you'll have me."

Christine led her into a store. They walked over to a rack with an assortment of accessories, decorated by Ribbons, winter, party, and driving gloves, as well as scarves and shoes at the bottom.

"This would look lovely on you," Christine lifted a black ribbon off the rack, and tied it around Evangeline's night gown. It looked like an actual dress now, much more proper, she thought; but that black ribbon… She grabbed for a gray one instead, fastening her hands on a matching pair of silvery shoes as well as a scarf. "This would look beautiful on you as well, but which do you prefer, the black or gray set?" It was her test. Evangeline stroked the black ribbon, tasting the silk like it was a memory.

"The black"

"Well than you must get that one" She smiled faintly, her own heart strings tugged.

She walked behind Evangeline and tied half of her hair up with a second ribbon, wrapping the scarf around her neck under her cloak, and tying the wool shoes on her feet underneath it. She looked like him. White, Black; Red.

"You look lovely."

"Thank you, but I cannot afford them. I will have to come back once I have gotten some franks,"

What a fib she was trying to pass off, Christine laughed at her pride. "Silly, I am getting them for you; you must look nice for tea."

Christine grabbed for a pair of dark brown gloves. "These, I am getting for myself." She pulled

"Tea?"

"Yes my pet."

She replied, the depressed look in her eyes replaced by sheepishness.

"Thank you Christine."

"No need to, I would have been all alone today if I had not bumped into you."

The cashier rung up their selections and Christine paid; she had not gotten to the door when she spoke once again.

"My new gloves; I am so impatient, I must wear them now. These are getting old anyway. Would you like them?"

Evangeline nodded, and Christine handed them to her. "Now, may I call you Angela?" "Yes Christine, though my friend-" She supposed it was an odd thing to only have a single friend. She corrected herself with a lie, "my friends, call me Eva."

"Well since I am a friend I will call you Eva, let us get into my carriage, I live a while from here and it's getting to be dusk. I hope your _friends _wouldn't mind if you stayed a night or two there? I am enjoying our conversation and haven't enjoyed the company of a good guest at my home for a while."

"I'm sure they wouldn't" She smiled at Christine, who took notice of the grin's beauty and sincerity. That sincerity; perhaps that was why he loved her.

They walked together to the stables, where Christine ordered the horses be readied swiftly. They were off before Evangeline could process what had happened. She felt anxiety creep inside her; he was alone in the dark somewhere. Her lovely Erik-

"I ordered some macaroons for today's tea, have you ever had them?"

Her crimson waves sloshed side to side

"Really? Most every French person I know has tried them. I've even tried them and I'm sweedish."

"I'm part Irish, I was raised in England."

"How funny, so is Raoul's mother, I mean the Irish bit, though you aren't as feisty as she, you haven't got curls either. Same odd shade of red hair though."

"Raoul?"

"Oh, I apologize, my dear husband."

Evangeline's eyes bore into Christine's with the greatest urgency of the world.

"Raoul De Chagny?"

"Yes, that would be him,"

She gasped in either terror or happiness.

"I am his sister, I am his sister! Please, you must think I'm mad. I am the illegitimate daughter of a man named Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux and Aednat May De Chagny. Is my mother there? Is she with your family now Vicomtess?" She stared out the window eagerly at the approaching villa.

Christine sat in udder awe. This all made sense. This was why she was thrown from the opera to begin with, why she cried to leave it. What was the madness of this small world?

"I believe you, and she is not Mademoiselle"

Evangeline turned to her, and she was looking into Raoul's eyes. Green, and beautiful. What a terrible family he had; how he had ever turned out so saintly she hadn't a clue. She was blessed with her own dear father, rest his soul, and she thanked god for it. What horrible people to abandon this child of sin to the punishment of her mother. It reminded her of someone else, as did the black ribbons in Evangeline's cherry chocolate hair.

"I will protect you, you are my sister now and I will not let anyone harm you mademoiselle."

She hugged her, Christine felt her sister in law's tears smear down her neck.

The last time she heard that was from him.


	17. Chapter 17

Raoul had been reading Frankenstein when a monster entered his home.

"Raoul, dearest, will you help me and my new friend?"

"Yes love, give me a minute"

Raoul sat the book down on his end table besides a scotch glass he had emptied. He walked down the hall to the parlor where he found his wife and a stranger. "Who is your friend Christine?"

It was almost odd and terrifying how the girl looked at him. She didn't seem unhappy to look at him, just unhappy in general. "Evangeline."

"That's a beautiful name, Mademoiselle; I will have Adrian take your coat." As he spoke, what Evangeline assumed to be Adrian pulled from her shoulders one of the last things she had left of _him._

"Do you know what your name means? I'm sure you do."

"Yes, it means bearer of good news."

"I am pleased to have someone like you in my home; we could use a little good news." He stared sadly at Christine, who returned the solemn gaze.

It had not been the bearer of good news for some, she thought, wrestling tears from her large green eyes

"What is your accent? It's very odd." That was like Raoul to change the subject of anything to disturb the pretty hairs on his head.

"Oh, it is kind of a jumble monsieur. I was raised in England, but I was born here." Here in this house, she so desperately wanted to say. "Raoul, I have to-"

Christine shook her head and responded. "Leave that to me, you need your rest and meal my lovely," She was angelic; she was an utter angel, a divine queen, healing away any and all of Evangeline's discomforts. She took the girls hand and led her to a dining room. "Well it looks like we have just missed our tea time; we will have to enjoy dinner instead. How does roast and potatoes sound?" Her mouth watered. She felt hungrier than usual; and it sounded perfect.

"Would you like some wine?" a servant shocked her from behind and she managed to bump silverware off the table. "Oh, I-, I'm sorry." She bent to scoop the forks up. "No, I think I would be very happy with just some water." "We have other beverages here mademoiselle, wouldn't you like some cider?" Christine interjected. It was too extravagant. The last time she had had cider was when she still lived here. She was two and Raoul was three. It was one of the only things she remembered about this place anymore and Stories of little Lotte her elder brother had told. "No, water will be fine, thank you both very much though."

Christine and Evangeline sat at the table in admiration of the other. The latter seeing strength and grace, the prior seeing innocence. Innocence lost but protected. "Will Raoul join us?" Christine shook her head.

"No, he tends to leave me be when I have guests. He enjoys eating and reading in the study." Christine lied.

"Oh" she blushed prettily,

The food arrived and Evangeline sliced her carving of roast meat with a knife. It melted on her tongue delectably. The potato slices were buttered and salted; she cut one in half and this time combines the two flavors of wine soaked beef and warm potato piece, she swallowed in ecstasy.

"Christine?"

"Yes?"

"This is the most wonderful thing I've ever tasted"

"I am so pleased" She smiled back at her sister, and recognized that she was bothered by it.

"Why are you so kind to me? I won't pretend any longer that I have any sense of nobility in me."

"Because you mistake what is noble with what is proper. You are a very noble person Eva. I have not heard anything bad come from your lips, and yet I can see in your eyes that something terrible has happened to you. You refuse to complain about the evils of the world that you do not partake in, but are surrendered to."

But she had surrendered to those evils. She had surrendered to the man.

* * *

Erik paced and panicked in his catacombs. He didn't know whether to die or chase. Fight or surrender to sweet death. He would have to; He couldn't risk her being alone on the streets, exposed to others who would-god what would they do? And the cold, the frozen wind and ice, she would surely die from that without shelter. She hadn't even eaten today. No-she was resourceful; surely she would find something until he found her.

He grabbed his thick, black woolen coat, the twin to hers, and flitted up the stairs prepared for public scrutiny. He had placed a different mask on, it was flesh colored, and in the dark night he was departing into, no one would get close enough to tell it was not actual skin. Authorities had never seen him before, but when the opera was burning, a mask was the definite unique characteristic they hunted for. He didn't want to test if they still did.

He reached the freezing night, and couldn't help but enjoy it. He had not seen the moon in such a long, long time. He avoided the stars in hopes of not seeing her face in them. He picked up speed.

He would cover all the alleys to at least ensure she wasn't outside tonight; besides freezing there was no imminent danger for his lost bird.

He was peeking into the pub side-street when all thoughts were interrupted. That voice. He turned to see a bumbling fop sliming his way out of the pub. He stretched his fingers; how he longed to strangle him. It was his entire fault. Everything was his fault. He had gotten Christine, and in return left her at home for drink? To be what? a pretty little flower in his garden, stuck in the same place forever for his own indulgence; restricting her ambitions and talents while he got drunk? His blood boiled. He calmed himself and approached him. Christine had made her choice, all that mattered was her now.

"Vicomte De Chagny."

"Wah-oer-naw! Naw you 'gain" He began to stumble away. Erik intercepted him, and pinned the fool to a wall.

"Monsieur I bid you well,

Did you think I'd let you harm her?

Poor Christine your house pet,

Paying for the sins that are yours,

But I have no power to change it,

Her choices made up,

Though the angel of mercy is still intact,

Comply or die you pitiful man,

Comply or I'll attack!"

The fop sat quivering and spitting on himself, he responded, "What am I to answer?"

"Where is your sister you bastard? Where is she?"

"I don' have a sister." He hiccupped and teeter tottered in his standing position.

Erik slammed his fist into the wall. "Stop lying to me!" He screamed into his enemies face " Where is Evangeline!?" He started to crack. His fear-inflicting voice lost its authority to sorrow. He backed away from his prey too weak to fight anymore.

"Where is my dove?" He pleaded.


	18. Chapter 18

Raoul felt sobered by adrenaline, Erik felt drunk with unhappiness.

The name sunk in. Christine had betrayed him. Raoul knew what she was thinking; that havingEvangelineat the home would lure the angel back. She was being cruel. He would never have her, not as long as he lived; yet she plotted to torment this dark creature with her love or lack of; all because she couldn't get what she wanted from her own husband. No. This wouldn't happen.

"Monsieur, I will help you."

"How can you help me? Why would you?"

"I am one of the most affluent and well respected men in Paris, and I know what it feels like to fear you will not be with the one you love." Erik shuddered. "This is my peace offering to you, accept it." He nodded, feeling helpless for the first time in a long while. "I have a condition monsieur."

"Vicomte?"

"If I find this girl, I want you to leave Paris."

"Then that is it; I will go." France in its entirety is nothing without her. The world is nothing without her.

Erik disappeared into the shadows, bound and cursed to run through the streets looking for his love. Raoul departed to where he would find her.

Evangeline sat sobbing in her sheets. Erik. How can you love someone you didn't even know? A person she thought she knew. But what did she really know? His name. But that love was burning, and passionate, and scolding.

She couldn't love him.

She rose feeling numb, and deadened. She functioned, she didn't feel; the name she loved so dearly disappeared into the recess of the mind. She couldn't think of him anymore.

Christine tapped on the door. "Come in,"

She saw a corpse staring out the window. Lovely, pale, with gray, dead eyes fixated on the light. She had seen one before. She grabbed for it's hand.

"Come now, let's go eat, you look hungry."

Her stomach grumbled and she obeyed. She didn't feel the hunger, only the emptiness.

"We are going to have some good English tea, pastry, and ham. Does that sound good?"

"Yes, that sounds wonderful." It was with half a heart she spoke. Christine knew where the other half lay, beating in the chest of her angel, or her monster.

They had sat down at the table and began to select from the pastry trays their fill.

"Christine," Evangeline stopped eating.

"Yes?"

"I would be living on the streets if not for you, and I know you realize this. Allow me to do something for you, please."

She was already doing something very important for Christine.

"You can work in our greenhouse, if you'd like. I haven't the time to tend to the roses, and I love having fresh ones around the house." Fresh, red roses.

"Yes, I would love that. It hardly even feels like it would be a job I love the idea so much."

Christine smiled falsely. "I'm so glad."

They finished their meal silently, two porcelain figures, soulless, and longing for something they couldn't have.

"Christine." Raoul entered the room wreaking of stale alcohols.

"Yes?" She replied innocently, though she saw that he knew. He read her thoughts.

"I want her gone!" He stabbed fingers at Evangeline, who stared in shock at her brother. She spoke faintly, "I will go; but I have to tell you something-"

"I don't want to hear it frankly! You are in league with the devil!" No, she was in love with the devil. Tears streamed down her face like rain drops.

Christine ran to her husband and slapped him. "God damn you Raoul! She is innocent and you know it!" "Don't talk to me like that! You know the only reason she's here is because I cant give yo-" She cut him off, it couldn't be known, by either her or him. "No! the only reason she is here is because she is your kin! She is your sister Raoul. I saved her!" He stared into the girls eyes, his own. "What? No my parent's never had another child besides me and Marius, and he died in infancy." He didn't believe his own words as he recognized his mother's features and his own in that perfect face.

"No, your parents didn't, your mother did." He snapped into reality. "How dare you? My mother is a saint, how dare you slander her name!" He turned to the girl. "Who have you told that to? Why?" Christine grabbed her husband's face and directed it to her own, forcefully and tenderly. "All you have to do is look at her my love, and you'll see yourself." He turned to her, and stared into those lovely eyes.

"Where did they send you? When did they send you?"

"You were four and I was three, and it was then that he realized I was not his, mother had rashly used the fact to scorn him in an argument. My life was forever changed. They sent you to the coast, and I was left home until I turned 5. Tormenting our parents until then, when mother shipped me to an English boarding school. They never had introduced me into society as a baby, and therefore nobody questioned when or why I disappeared. You were too young to remember, and I only know these things because she explained them in a letter when I turned 10. All speaking between us stopped then, and I became orphaned. They never told my real father I had existed. It was mother's punishment to know I suffered. She forgot me and forgave him soon enough. All they did for me past then was pay the school until I turned 18, they stopped then and I was kicked out onto the streets."

"Why did they hide you from me? Why would they need to?"

"It was shameful, I am not your father's child, and no one could know; if Christine had been unfaithful to you, and you saw another man's face in her infant, would you not strive to rid yourself of it?"

Yet that was exactly what Christine wanted, she thought, a child by another man. The doctors had said Raoul was could bear her no children. Christine needed children at all costs. Yes, Raoul was sterile.

Erik was not.


	19. Chapter 19

No sister of his would be condemned to darkness. A beggar maybe; but any sibling of his was practically royalty. Yes. She would never be condemned to darkness again. His eyes watered as he looked at the sickly, pale girl, seeing bits of himself in her features.

"I'm so sorry." He choked; emotions boiling over in every corner of his head.

Erik would not have her.

He walked over to her, kneeling besides her, and looking into those wide and pained eyes. He grabbed her hand. "You are my sister now. You will be treated, as you should. Father is dead now; and even if he lived; I would never allow you to be cast aside again. Mother's shame is her own; and you are lovely and moral. No one shall touch you." Her heart was already stained with _his_ fingerprints. She trembled in her seat.

She kissed Raoul's cheek. "Thank you. God; the little kindness I've seen; how much I gain in your presence. I swear to do right by you always brother, from this moment and always after."

He frowned at her; it wasn't disapproval as she had seen so much before; it was the equally common expression of pity before her. She had seen it all her life. From classmates who gave her old clothes, from teachers who boarded her in the vacation months when all the children went home to loving parents, loving families; from people as she begged for scraps of anything, for something to sate her weakness, her cold, her hunger. She had seen that look much. With _him_ was the only place she didn't. With _him_ she saw the unusual look of admiration, adoration. Looks she had never seen before. Yes. She had seen the look of pity far too much.

"You will never leave my sights again, baby sister. Let me teach you how to live, let me give the power to learn."

She had already learned how to live; in the night, in the shadow. In a night more exactly, cradled and treasured in the arms of someone just as dark and pitied. She began to cry uncontrollably.

Raoul swallowed her in his arms; hugging the closest thing to a child he could have, perhaps for him and his wife; treasuring being a father to her, hoping in his head Christine would be satisfied as her mother. He was a year older than the girl; yet for the rest of her life he knew he would see her as something much younger, much more defenseless than himself. He would always protect his little Evangeline.

No. Erik would not have her.

* * *

**4 weeks later**

Raoul lingered outside the opera house, venturing as far as it's kitchen entrance before being greeted by the shadow man. He had splashed his eyes with alcohol before coming here. They burned, and sizzled in his head. It looked like he had been crying. He rubbed at them, practicing his tears.

"Vicomte?" He had looked everywhere. Every night, Everyday, and in his dreams, the very few times he slept. He was chasing the green eyes that told you everything, and left you questioning all the same. Chasing her kiss, her requited love, the accepted apologies for his venomous actions. Chasing most of all a girl that had seen him truly without caring about what she saw. The dove not fleeing the face but the distorted soul behind it.

"She is my sister, as I am positive from both scientific fact and from looking at her, from talking to her." Erik felt relief until he finished his sentence "Oh god; she was my sister."

Was? His stomach shrunk and rolled in seizures. He was shaking. "Was?" He repeated it audibly. His voice was no longer music, no longer celestial. It was hurt, and human, and fearful as any mortal would be.

"Erik I found her" Raoul sighed and let out a sob. "Erik, she was so tiny, she was so thin and cold." He couldn't hear it anymore. He felt his ears ringing and sickness brewing in him, noises escaped from his mouth as he shook. "No. Vicomte-"He was sobbing before another word escaped his lips. "We didn't know she was so sick Erik, God, I would have gotten you, Oh god-" Raoul shuddered and a tear rolled down his cheeks.

Erik was in riot, his body was uncontrollable, his knees giving way and his face soaked in salty tears as his shoulders heaved. He held in those tears. They were burning him inside out. "Why didn't you get me." He mumbled. The burning tears turning to hatred. "Why didn't you get me you bastard?!" he rose and screamed in the boy's face. Tears and spit splashed onto his rosy complexion. He saw her in those fearing eyes. His head spun, he felt like vomiting. He turned and punched the wall until his hands bled and he collapsed once again.

"Oh my god." It ripped out of his voice like a reopened wound. "Why didn't you get me?" He pleaded, and Raoul saw true weakness in his foe. He had like David, chipped away all the strength in his Goliath, he had sliced his Achilles heel viciously, mercilessly. It had always been his heart. With Christine, with Evangeline; it had always been the heart that was his weakness, his motivation. He lived by it. He was dying by it. He sat in the snow, more ghostly than ever and yet more human than Raoul had ever seen.

"She would have been upset Erik. That Angel would have been upset." Raoul was crying.

He saw the phantom's chest stop moving. The air escaping from his lungs as he sat there with the wind knocked out of him, his thick black hair draping wildly onto his brow and gray eyes. "How?" He muttered it between sobs. "How did my dove-" He shook and dripped in the snow. He couldn't say it.

"It was pneumonia. She had gotten too cold, and it set in rapidly. She had only been with us a week when it happened."

Erik sat breathless. Sadness washed from his eyes, replaced with still staring, with numbness laced with impending rage. "She's dead." Raoul nodded speechless. Erik rose to his feet and screamed, his pale dry lips striped with wet tears. "She's dead!" It was piercing in that unmoving night. "Raoul, I have killed her." He stared at, and pitied the monster he once feared. His knees falling onto the ground next to him, his arm draping around the untouchable beast's shaking shoulders. "I have killed her." It was disbelief, madness and self-loathing laced in his eyes.

He had inflicted upon his enemy the greatest tortures in their alliance. That pain was in the phantom's greatest interest; though he didn't know it. Did he not want her happiness? As when this monster leaves, the angel will soar. Evangeline will finally be safe. He had found her after all? Erik never specified whether dead or alive mattered. Now Erik was to leave the country or, if by his own choice, this earth. He wiped at his fake tears as Erik poured his real ones onto Raoul's shoulder. Miles away she was safe, and in her bed, and he would never know. Her fake death would give her real life, and Erik would be gone with her past. He would protect his baby sister, his child, his little Evangeline that so desperately needed protecting.

Yes. Erik would not have her.

Yet he already did, as the days swelled Evangeline's pregnant belly.


	20. An Individual Review of All my Reviewers

**A REVIEW OF MY READERS**

Dearest Readers,

Thank you, thank you all most sincerely. You are reading, following, reviewing, and favoriting my work, though I assure you I am nowhere close to being finished with it, you are all an inspiration to continue it. Your reviews are especially appreciated, I enjoy your individual critiques, and the compliments and criticisms that go along with them (The very few and very constructive criticisms that are never unaccompanied by anything less than treasured praises if I might add). I hope you have all received my PM, and understand how much I mean those words. You are the reasons for these chapters, and should be rewarded for it before we reach number 20. I will now be reviewing you all.

**Special thanks to**

**RedDeathLvr, Stargazer1364, ****PhantomFan01****, ****Nakia-Park23, bloodwolfearthdragon**- Everything you post makes me want to write more and more. You have given me such encouragement, more than anyone. I update every 24 hours just because of people like you. A steady supply of comments from you all is flattering on a tremendous level. Thank you deeply.

**I am going to review you all in order from most recent to least, (Guest comments will be included)**

**RedDeathLvr,** thank you for giving me that extra plus of motivation, knowing how much you like the story is so wonderful. _Immensely _is my new favorite word

**Stargazer1364, **YOU are freaking hilarious. Thank you for making me burst out laughing on a number of occasions; your comments are definitely a meaningful thing to me. I'm obsessed with cliffhangers even more now. Sending you mental high-fives, the guy from Horton hears a who wishes he were you. You are a great, and for now, the only friend I've got on fanfiction so far. Thank you so much

**PhantomFan01,** I'm pretty sure your comments are amazing. Every time you write OMG, I know I did a good job. Thank you so much

**Nakia-Park23, **You honestly post some of the absolute greatest comments, I respect your opinion so much. Everything you say makes me super glad I started writing this story, and I love seeing what emotions my story might bring out in people. It's really awesome that you let me know that . Please keep reviewing.

**bloodwolfearthdragon, **You. Are. Awesome. You know why? Because I'm actually sleeping a lot more thanks to you thanks so much for looking out for me, and making me feel great about my story. Let's fight my irregular sleep schedule together my friend!

**Andimpink, **You made me laugh up a storm with your comment, I'm so glad you like everything, and no worries, I'm getting 8 hours of sleep every night

**Guest, **whoever you are, Thank you. I enjoyed the baguette and ribbons comment tremendously. Kudos to you my friend!

**Awesomemeannie, **Thank you for being awesome/thinking my story is awesome.

**Guest, **Your comment on her abrupt personality change really opened my eyes to a big flaw I had in the story; and I honestly think it has been one of the best reviews I've ever gotten. It has made me try tremendously to never go half way on anything. Thank you

**phantomessangel, **You have been the first to comment on my story. You pretty much started it all really; I wouldn't be here without that spark you gave me. Your super awesome, everyone should just give you high fives for being the reason we got to chapter 19 to begin with. Thank you so very, very much.

**MummyRules, **Your comments are just always awesome, thanks so much for posting them

**Guest, **You are another one of those comments that just kept me going, I really hope I've kept it interesting for you.

**Lexirothschild, ** I'm so glad I wrote something worth your "Awws" :)

**Wrena, **Your comment kept me going. Thank you.

**Celtic Authoress**, I hope, more than with anyone else to follow and review my story, that your interest and intrigue was repaid. Your comment stuck with me the moment I read it. I hope I will continue to have my story be seen as good in your eyes, when you said, "I have not been so intrigued with a Phantom of the Opera fanfiction like this in a very long time!" I knew I couldn't let you down. I honestly hope I didn't; that sentence is just something that stuck with me every chapter I wrote. It meant a lot, and I hope you know that.

**Bravo, Bravo, Bravissimo my friends. You have all granted me the greatest glory. **

**With the greatest sincerity, **

**Your Angel of Music**


	21. Chapter 21

Evangeline stammered from her bed, each porcelain leg acting quickly and clumsily. Her stomach roiled and turned acidic within her as her mouth began to grow watery in disgusted preparation. She stumbled finally into her nearby bathroom, releasing into a depository her sickness. She vomited until Christine ran from her room two doors down to discover the source of commotion.

The angel stroked at her sister's hair as she heaved above the toilet. "Oh, Evangeline, let's get you in bed; your ill." Evangeline turned to her friend. Complete sadness in those wide green eyes. "Christine-" she turned back to continue being ill, cutting her own self off. She recovered soon enough, and fully; her eyes calmed and determined looking.

She sat weak on the floor as Christine began to draw a bath. "Thank you." She mumbled. Her determination turning to shame. "Don't worry sweet, come climb into the tub and clean yourself. I'll have a maid outside, so you can just call out if you're feeling sick again." Evangeline nodded.

As much as Raoul wanted her to adopt this girl, her motherly instincts weren't sated by caring for a young adult; a young adult only a year younger than her husband and herself at that. She stroked the girls head before leaving the room. "Have a nice bath my dove," she smiled. She was resenting Raoul for expecting Evangeline to fill this empty void for them. Or maybe she was resenting Evangeline. She turned as she was shutting the door to look at the girl. No, she could never resent such a lovely creature. Not yet.

"My dove," Evangeline whispered as she sunk into the water. Erik floated into her thoughts like a dream and a nightmare. His swirling black hair and gray eyes poison to her peace. All she owned of him was that memory. It was their memory. She traced the lips he had so passionately kissed, recalling the sweet taste of them; recalling the way his hands touched her skin in water like this. How he held her in his arms the whole night after, the way he hugged her hips as they slept. It was a sin she did not regret, but was punished for. He didn't love her.

It was only a couple of weeks ago, and the month between them felt like a lifetime. A month? She felt nausea from a new reason; stress, anxiety, fear. No. It was malnutrition; it had happened before, she had skipped her 'time' before.

She pulled at her hair; no. She hadn't been malnutritioned; she had been well fed, better fed than in her whole life before living here. Even after she was kicked out, she skipped only breakfast and lunch before finding Christine, and she was fed a hefty dinner in compensation.

Oh no. She clasped to her scarred abdomen, imagining the idea of tiny feet kicking back at her. Oh god. What would she do? She was a dishonor on the De Chagny's. They would never let her stay; she and her baby would die in the Parisian streets all because of-no. It wasn't his fault. She would never blame him for this.

She rose from the tub, shaking with cold and fear. She couldn't lie to Christine. She couldn't. She was kind, and good; maybe she would help, and if not she would surely comfort her, and extend her stay with them. "Christine" He voice trembled as she placed a towel on her small figure.

A voice from the other side of the door responded. "No miss, the Vicomtess is just downstairs, would you like me to get her for you?" Evangeline hesitated. Her fate would be completely in the hands of Christine. Little did she know they weren't hands but claws. "Yes please," She whispered and added, "Can you fetch me some clothes first and tell her to meet me in my room?" "Yes ma'am." The maid shuffled off and returned with a white dress. White for purity. Tears of shame flowed into her lovely eyes.

"Innocence lost, unprotected," She sobbed her lullaby. The note rang truer than it ever had.

She cried while clothing herself, making note to splash water into her eyes before she spoke to her Angel. The angel of mercy and goodness she betrayed before she met. Her little feet pattered onto the floor towards her room. She prayed they would not be the last pair of little feet to wander in this house. Evangeline opened and closed the door to her room, sitting herself on the bed. Before Christine could say a word, she spoke. "I am with child."

Coldness filled Christine; she was disgusted by the girl. This was against all of her morals, all that was right. Christine rose and smacked the girl, her long nails like stones against her cheeks. Evangeline fell sideways onto the bed and sobbed into the blanket. "You, you-!" She accused, "Get out now! Get out of my home you-" She stopped scorning the girl for a sin she longed to commit herself. A child. How simple. She would do no wrong to adopt it, would she? To care for the mother, and adopt the child _if _something bad were to happen, if she were to abandon the child or by some _unfortunate _reason be killed in child birth? Yes. The world was full of possibilities. Christine pulled on her brown curls, acting out disappointment and caring against every negative notion she held for this girl now. "We aren't to tell Raoul." Was all she said. Evangeline nodded as the tears rolled and plopped onto her lap.

"What happened Evangeline?" She stammered. Was it his? Had he raped her? How would there be any other answer to this if it was his? She began to pity her again, releasing her hatred and assuming the worst, being informed of that it was not. "I-I loved him." Christine spoke bitterly and curtly "Who was it?" she asked out of obligation. She, already knowing and doubting the answer she would receive.

"An angel," she whispered. "An angel of music."

Christine now acknowledged her resentment of the lovely creature she once doted on. She had gotten pregnant on her first try. Christine, who had stayed pure for her husband, abided all of god's rules, who longed for a child so urgently; yes, it was Christine that was not pregnant, and this scrawny whore who was. She had gotten pregnant on her first try. Perhaps this was god's plan for her; Perhaps Christine must perform god's work to punish the sinful. Her head was spinning sickly and twistedly, unlike it had ever thought. It would be a shame if anything happened to Evangeline during child birth.

"Never wear white again." She walked out of the room, pale and plotting unlike the angel of mercy Evangeline saw her as.

Yes, much more like a grim reaper she plotted.


	22. Chapter 22

He couldn't leave. But he had to. It was too hard to abandon memories of her; but he deserved to suffer. She was dead. Living would be the ultimate torment, suicide was no option. Not yet. That dark hell he would so willingly surrender to for her.

Evangeline. What has he done to his Evangeline?

He walked slowly through his hellish cage. Sobbing, pacing, hungry, and weak as she was, pained as she had felt. He truly was a monster. She had made him doubt it, but at her death he recognized his wickedness like a blinding light. It consumed him; it empowered him. He was sick in a twisted, sadistic way. He was murderous. The world had done this to her as much as him.

Now like a candle flicker, it shut off and he was numb and in darkness again. Blind, and scraping his way to the surface, to his enemies, to her. To her. Murderous once again, as she had never intended to make him, heat blistering his veins. Those angelic lips, those piercing eyes a cloud in his consciousness. Was she ever real? Did she ever exist? Could something so perfect ever be?

He clenched his jaw as his sadness and rage turned toxic. It had been his fault once again, that he had lost her. It had been the same with Christine; if his two loves could even be compared. If the first of them could be even considered a love compared to the second. He had driven them away, and they had fled the beast as they rightly should have. Yes. He had become the beast. Given in to the monster.

His mind was gone, his heart non-existent, guiltless, unable to love, or show mercy. He was the ghost of his old self, yet completely changed, completely vicious. He would no longer be as lenient on his foes. No, he would never give them the chance to hurt him anymore. He would skin them before they could speak.

"Darkness, darkness, I've seen it,

how I had once craved the light,

And now embrace the night,

Blackness my old friend,

As the sun only burns and withers me,

And yet the moon still stings,

For there in the stars is she,

Oh a place I crave to be,

But the darkness as I've seen it,

Consumes me,

May the stars bless my Evangeline.

Evangeline"

It had sounded sick and beautiful; a madness that fills you with it's twistedness, that you breathe in gasping for more. Dark and mournful seduction that corrupts the soul and sanctifies it, contradicting all thoughts and condemning all who hear it. He donned his cloak, clasping a red rose in his hand. He ran through his shattered mirror, the mask of insanity on both sides of his face, blood dripping from his hands where the thorns had cut through. Where she had cut into him.

The tunnel was narrow and unlighted. He focused on the exit, hearing the rats and water sloshing. The echoes of his footsteps disrupting the bliss of complete ebon night cascading onto his flesh where it belonged, where it hid him so perfectly. He halted and removed his mask; his chaotic mind's genius destroying itself and going mad.

"I am the Phantom of the Opera!

the Phantom of the opera!

Sing my Angel!

Sing my angel of music!

Sing for me!"

He heard her voice in his ears; her loveliness the only light in his diseased mind, recycling old lyrics with new meaning as his sorrow hit him, as his anger fled further down the halls for him to catch up with. He walked slowly.

"I gave you my music,

Made your song take wing,

And now,

How you've repaid me,

Denied me,

And betrayed me,

I was bound to love you,

When I heard you sing,

Evangeline,"

He breathed in past his agony,

"They will curse the day

They did not do,

All that my dove

Deserved,"

He began to run.

"Down I go to the dungeons of my black despair,

Down I've plunged in the prison of my mind!

Down this path into darkness deep as Hell!"

And the words ricocheted off the walls, swallowing his body in his own useless and perfect noise. He sobbed, and broke down, his hands feeling the dark ground, he had collapsed upon, rat feet scuttling over them and his flower.

"No compassion anywhere,

Evangeline,

Yet pity comes too late,

I've turned around and faced my fate,

an eternity of knowing she has died"

He had held her in these monstrous hands, and she had been content to be held by them. She had returned his kisses, slept in his embrace, rested under the eye's that never ceased to watch her rest, the eyes that feared so much as blinking would shatter the dream. But he has wakened to a bloody morning.

There in his vision was a light at the end of the tunnel, his blue eyes being reborn in its light, his soul shattered to face it alone. He strode towards it, his legs carrying him. He was blanketed by the forest immediately; his dry lips and busted heart absorbing the fresh pine air. He had escaped here after Christine, through the mirror and past the darkness to embrace light. He stumbled through the snowy bunches and clumps of soil to the graveyard, he had decorated her father's grave in flower after flower, crying as he did it, wincing at memories and rose thorns.

He had prayed to the man like he was god. He had said on the foot of the grave to a man he had never known and prayed to him for his daughter, for the beautiful dance, singer, and girl he had thought he loved. But this wasn't like that. He wasn't praying anymore.

He had to see her grave. That small patch that was left of her, he had to give her this rose. No doubt, she would be there; the De Chagny plot was only a short walk from monsieur Daae's grave. Raoul would have surely put his baby sister there, the poor girl he never knew, the poor girl he would have loved so dearly. Oh god. If only it had only been as simple as him stealing her away like Christine.

It wasn't. He felt it was sickening with every step to near her corpse. Yes. But it even worse to be so close, to have it be so real. Metal Gates wove around a sign with her family name on it. He started reading all the grave markers through his blurred vision, and walked dizzily past each of them that wasn't her. If hadn't hasn't buried her here, he would, god he would-kill. Raoul would hang. His Evangeline, in a pauper's grave….

He wasn't disoriented enough to recognize the fact that she wasn't here.


	23. Chapter 23

Evangeline was leaving for propriety. Not for her own sense, not even for the sake of her child, she left because her Raoul deserved better than to know their little sister was so shameful, and Christine deserved better than to be shamed by the whole ordeal. Yes, the family that lied, and plotted against her deserved better. Her wide eyes grew larger as dusk and noise clashed into her brain.

Horse feet pounded and thudded towards the door. Horse feet that would pound and thud away with her in their clasp, dragging her from happiness to utter doom and loneliness, as arranged by her sister. Christine would visit, she says, around time for the baby to be born. But she isn't here to bid her adieu, she is somewhere in this house sleeping soundly at the wicked actions a desperate girl mistakes for kindness.

She walks out into the dawn, closing the door quietly as to not stir her brother; they must hide it from him. Though little could wake a drunk man she supposed. She sat down on the polished steps of the De Chagny household, placing her suit case besides her and recalling bits and particles of thoughts and memories she had as a child.

Yes, one of her fondest memories was of her mother carrying her down these steps, the center of her adorations, she was bringing her little baby to the opera, creating memories that would get her innocent baby through the rest of her miserable life, little to her foolish mother's knowledge, the child's existence little to her real father's knowledge. Her own child's existence unknown to it's father.

Oh let it be just like him. His eyes, his smile, his voice, his mind-no the world wouldn't see his genius if he got his face. She saw past it, but would the world be just as blind as her? Maybe not just like him, maybe not.

She rubbed at her tight abdomen, 7 weeks. No bigger than a blueberry surely was the infant, yet her tiny body swelled in anticipation. Christine had insisted she not delay her parting any longer than the 3 weeks she already had, as she had already begun to gain weight.

She played with a strand of red hair, and smiled at the night time. She started to sing to keep herself busy. She soon forgot the world in her head, but not in her lyrics.

"I am a little dove,

That longs for love,

But my fate is dashed,

And he is gone,

can I forgive him?

Is there anything to forgive?

I knew it all along,

that I would be alone.

He was just dream,

An illusion.

Misery is real,

Loneliness is pain,

What was then,

Is not now,

And I feel so ashamed."

His heart throbbed and he felt insane, perhaps he was hearing voices like this. Hearing her voice, his angel. No, he didn't deserve to call her that.

"But there is a piece of him,

A kiss from him,

A love like him,

Yes,

there is a piece of him,

somewhere inside me,

making me stronger,

and making me so weak,

god,

how that piece of him,

begins to torment me."

It was so beautiful, so real, he was giving into the delusion willingly, he trotted through the rose bushes towards the Mansion's back door. How is seemed louder, and louder as he approached the house. Perhaps it was a sign from her, to wreak savage revenge for Raoul's injustices.

"But the song's that he sung to me,

Are stuck in my mind,

Sweet, and sorrowful,

I feel them again,

Lovely Erik,

Your killing me,"

Her voice cracked, she was sobbing. He stopped in shock. Was it real? Or was he mad? The latter seemed more accurate. He had already killed her. His feet began to move again, lasso in hand like a familiar friend. He saw a candle in the upstairs window and launched himself towards the black wall for camouflage. It moved down the stairs and disappeared from his view. He wouldn't see it come. Raoul's Death would be silent.

He slid down the path, crawling against the green house. There were roses in it; how ironic. He snaked into the door, and plucked at a crimson flower. His thumb bled from the thorns, yet he uttered no sound. What little pain it was compared to his life anyhow. He held the flower in his palms, feeling it cut into him. A door ruptured open, and he silently dove to the ground, leaning behind pots, and swallowing himself in the dark corners of the room. "Angel? Are you in here? I'd like to say goodbye before you leave." His heart thrummed and rioted in his chest. "Are you there girl?" He sat quietly as Christine examined a nearby bush. "That girl really is a gifted botanist. Roses in winter;" She sat sniffing, unaware of Erik sleeking away like a shadow.

He felt the snow crunch as he adjusted himself. She was just as beautiful as she had been when he first fell in love with her. Those chocolate curls just as inviting, those warm eyes just as alluring. But his heart was not there anymore, and he was equally ensured by the new trait those warms eyes beheld.

She was more confident surely, but not in any healthy way. She had been spoiled, and was now entitled to do as she pleased, as most of the wealthy really were. Her childlike innocence was gone; replaced by conniving looks, and snobbery. But he held onto the idea of her anyways, remembering fondly the girl he had once loved, feeling shocked at the woman she had become. Hoping she was still in there, for the sake of her and Raoul's happiness at least.

He heard crying again, and that melodious voice of Christine wafted in the air, a tone of scold and mocking appearing most unattractively with the false façade of affection trying to mask the bitterness of her vocals. "Stop it now, you will be fine, stop crying. I will come later on to meet you, it's only a couple of months until the baby is due." Was she pregnant? Yes, surely the fop would need an heir. Christine would, despite who he saw now, always be a wonderful mother.

"Please, can't I be closer? Oh god I know I must go, but can't I be closer? Can't we all be together when it happens?" Erik felt sick. It was her voice, it sounded like her voice…

He felt hypnotized, and move towards it.

"Please I've been alone for so long Christine, please don't-"

"You've made your choice." She spoke curtly.

Erik was on the side of the house, sliding around the windows deftly. Was this real? Was that not in his head? Was it her?

He wandered towards the women, his heart beating in rapid and unnerving pace. His silent feet began to grow clumsy as their discussion grew clearer. "You're shameful," Christine would show no pity, for whatever mistake this girl had made. "I'm so sorry" He felt his knees slide to the ground as he heard her better. It wasn't her, it couldn't be.

Horse feet grew loud in all ears. "Here is your carriage, have a safe trip." Christine spoke icily, what had happened to make he so cold, so unfeeling? He heard the door slam shut and approached the crying victim, praying, praying to whatever god there was that it was her. That this was true.

"I have made my choice,

I have picked,"

They were both choking back sobs at the notes, for the sole reason that they had ever parted.

"I have suffered all,

For love,

All, my pain, all of it,

For the choice I had made,

I chose him,

my lovely, lovely,

Erik,"

He sat in the darkness, seeing a light at the end of the tunnel once again.

Evangeline.


	24. Chapter 24

"I gave you my music,

Made your song take wing,

And this,

How you repay me,

Love, and serenade me,"

Evangeline's green eyes stopped tearing as she turned towards the darkness, her chest rising and falling quickly; whether from fear or surprise Erik could not determine.

"Say you'll share with me,

One love,

One lifetime,

Lead me,

Save me from my solitude,"

She responded, her heart beat thrumming in her ears, her head growing dizzy as her voice grew strong.

"Anywhere you go,

Let me go too, "

He lost his breath as she continued saying the words he had always wished to hear, her untrained voice sounding perfected.

"Erik,

That's all I ask,"

She paused and stared into the darkness, her breathing becoming thick and anxious.

"Of you" she held the ghostly note and it rang into the darkness, into his ears, and down to his heart. It was thrumming and drunk from her presence.

He revealed himself from the his hiding spot, his black cloak swirling in the cold air, those frosty blue eyes looking defeated and shocked against the snowy back drop as his legs propelled him towards her.

He swallowed her into his arms, and she cried into his shoulder, shaking, and finally at peace. "Erik," she trembled, looking up at his eyes, tracing his unmasked cheek with her fingers, "Are you here to take me home?" Home, the words felt like knives in his head. Was this mansion not her home? Was his impiety so truly preferred to Raoul's kindness, Raoul's luxury frowned upon in the face of his hideous self? She was asking to go back into darkness, to go back into the night-because it was home to her.

"Oh god" He sobbed into her hair, "I would take you anywhere; say the word and I will do anything." He shook as their bodies clung to each other, her heat healing away these weeks of pain. "They had told me; they had said you were dead" His hand shakily held hers, He kissed her before she could respond, it burned and seared them both, each red lip clinging to the other. They sat in the snow, the world melted away, before he came to his senses, "Eva," His nose rested against hers as he breathed onto her beautiful face, his sweet breath warming.

"We have to go now; hurry we have to leave before they come," Evangeline stared up at him puzzled, "Wait, Erik, who told you I was dead? Who are we running from-"The door slammed open and Christine huffed out onto the porch, carrying a blanket. Erik attempted to skid into the shadows, only successfully creating a hefty distance between himself and Evangeline. They heard the pounding horse hooves stop in the distance at the De Chagny estate gates like their heartbeats.

Christine stared wide-eyed at the two, her breathing was stopped and she was silent. She abruptly began to scream as her plans unraveled. "Raoul!" She dropped the blanket and ran into the house, sealing the door behind herself before Erik could stop her. "Eva, run!" He launched himself for her hand, and they dragged each other forwards, forgetting all of Evangeline's possessions and questions on the porch.

They scrambled through the snow, Erik leading speedily as Evangeline clambered clumsily through the snow, her feet sinking into the thicker clumps Erik had expertly slid past. She was nearly at a walking pace from sinking into the ice, her eyes desperate and fearful as Erik turned to look at her. He saw the front door of the house open and Christine stumble out sobbing, no doubt followed by Raoul.

He treaded backwards to apprehend Evangeline, scooping her into his arms and moving forwards, her extra weight sinking them both into the snow. "Erik, go! They can't hurt me, please just go, get the carriage and backtrack for me, they won't catch me as soon as you think." He paused and stared into her beautiful eyes. "I can't lose you again, I can't do it Eva." She shook her head, "I'm here, but we can't be together if you don't do this."

He set her down into the snow, and rose to the surface, skidding across the snow drifts to the gate, to their freedom on the other side. He would have to steal a horse; the carriage wouldn't travel back fast enough. He hurried his pace, daring to turn around for only a second, seeing Christine sobbing still and Raoul clambering over the snow to Evangeline; there was something in his hands. He rushed to the gate, climbing over it agilely, making it to the waiting and oblivious carriage driver.

He worked quickly; first on the locks which broke open easily enough, and second on the horse's harness. He was swift and unnoticed by the half-awake pilot, removing the horse from it's chains while looking back towards the love of his life and the enemies that grew closer to her.

The harness rolled to the ground, off of the horses shoulders. He mounted the black horses' bare back and proceeded forwards, the epitome of darkness altogether. But there was the moon, sitting in white snow, ready to reveal a beautiful night if they caught each other. But garish light clung in the background, the sunlight chasing her away. But there, his hands were not empty. In his claws was a rifle.

Erik ordered the horse faster and it obeyed, black hair flying close to his own. He was so close to her; Oh god Raoul was closer. She pushed towards her angel, her red hair flying about in the cold wind. Raoul hesitated as Christine called something unintelligible, to which Raoul responded in his distance "I won't hit her." Erik no doubt more relieved and more fearful at the words.

Closer, closer, she was frozen there in the ice staring towards her brother. Erik stopped the horse and swallowed her in his arms, mere meters from Raoul. "Hurry, hurry we've got to-" Erik paused as he noticed what Evangeline was looking at.

Raoul shook as he poised his gun, Christine looking terrified from the porch. "Evangeline," the boy's voice shook, "Evangeline get away from there please, please or I will shoot." She shook her head and looked at him pitifully. "If I move you will shoot him anyways." He stopped arguing and looked towards his enemy, the Phantom of the Opera there at his mercy. Erik dropped his lasso.

"Look into my eyes, see how desperate you have made me!" Erik stared silently, wordlessly as Raoul broke down. "I didn't want to kill you; I wanted you to leave, to go and leave Paris but you didn't listen."

Erik shook with rage. "I was going to." He said it as calmly as he could. "I was going to leave Paris and die like the miserable man I was. I went to say good-bye, to see the girl you told me was dead, to bring her at the very least a flower, to try and accept what I have lost." He started to raise his voice, and it was no longer steady and controlled, his anger rolling through each word. "But you; god damn you! You didn't even think to give her grave, I thought that you threw her body in a ditch! I came here to kill you for it!" He calmed down as he looked at her, living, and staring at him. "But she wasn't in a ditch, she was there, shaking on your front steps."

Raoul looked puzzled, staring towards Christine for understanding, receiving only a cold glare from his wife. "It doesn't matter, I'm keeping you safe baby sister, I swear it! Whether you think so or not!"

He poised the gun again, and cocked the rifle. Erik stared down the barrel.

Evangeline panicked and started moving "Stop-Stop! No! Stop it I'm-"

The gun went off, but Erik heard only the words "Pregnant."

Evangeline's blood splattered onto his face.


	25. Chapter 25

He gasped; he had stopped breathing. All Erik could do was blink. He sat there numb, staring forward, tasting her blood on his lips. "No." He said the words quietly, uncomprehendingly. He looked down at her, her back facing him and her limp body lying there on the ground. "NO!" He roared. "NO! God Damn you!" He quivered, his body shaking and the world growing black; it was over. Oh god, she was carrying his baby. "You killed them! You've taken everything from me!" He sobbed, he screamed.

Raoul sat stunned, the world erupting before all of their eyes. "You killed them!" Erik was trembling. His life collapsed like the girl who had changed everything, she was pregnant. Oh god; she was in love with him; they were going to run away together, she, she sacrificed herself for- for a _monster_. No. "Protect her from me!? You tried to protect her from _me_?! _You_ killed them." Raoul stood with his eyes watering, the gun on the ground, and his wife in the background mourning the child she had wished for.

A noise disrupted their pain; A gasp; there she was, bleeding in the snow and gasping for air. "Eva?!" Erik panicked, falling into the ice, cradling her, kissing her, sobbing. Erik shouted orders "Raoul, go get a doctor now!" He clambered on top of the horse and departed quicker than the bullet that had caused this.

Christine was running besides the two, examining the unconscious girl and pitying her lover. She inspected the wound; the bullet had ripped through her chest. "Oh god." She whispered. Erik looked at Christine, "Wha-what's happened?" "Get her inside; we need to keep her from miscarrying or bleeding out, she's in shock." Erik scooped her body into her arms. Launching himself towards the house, placing his feet in the sink holes Christine had made getting there, moving more quickly. There he was on the porch in minutes, carrying her bloody form across the threshold.

Christine ran through the door moments later, directing Erik to the closest bedroom, calling to her staff for blankets, alcohol and boiling water. He scrambled into the room and laid her down on the bed, her fragile body resting, unaware of it's pain. Yet not asleep for long enough.

Her eyes fluttered open and Erik smiled through his tears to see them again, thinking he would never see those lovely green eyes again; those beautiful indefinable and expressive eyes he loved so dearly. That they would be sealed shut forever. His smile disappeared as she let out a scream of pain.

"Eva; Eva I'm so sorry" He begged, she shuddered and looked at him through her tears, half-smiling through her agony. "You're alive, oh thank god. We have to go-" she hesitated as she regained herself, a clear look of pain written across her features. "We have to go or they will hurt you." He frowned, stroking her hair. "No, they won't. Raoul is fine with us; everything is alright. Just try to focus, to calm yourself." He was trying desperately to settle her stress; she wouldn't survive at this rate. She tried to nod but instead whimpered; her body in torment. She reached for his hand, wincing as she did. "To make sure your real, to make sure you're not going to disappear." He smiled, tears running down his face. "No I'm never going to leave." The words were choked out, and the world was surreal.

He heard horse hooves pounding away in the background, listening to their fate riding on the shoulders of what might be Evangeline's murderer. He was startled suddenly by her choking noises, he looked over to her body, seeing her chest heave against its will and her pain sensory in haywire. She was holding it back; he could see the agony in her eyes but not hear it. She was holding back for him. She clenched onto his hand for what seemed like hours; Christine walked in 30 minutes into the ordeal. "Raoul is coming soon, he is great rider-it takes him 45 minutes to go to town on a usual day; with what is happening he should be half-way home by now." Erik's jaw slackened and his weak eyes stared at Christine, growing fiery, his musical voice snarling. "Don't you dare talk about _him_," He felt his love hold onto to him tighter as she grew weaker and more stressed. Erik whispered into her ears his lullabies.

A doctor burst into the door moments later, "Eva, your okay; everything Is all right." Erik cried towards her desperately as Raoul entered and dragged him away into the hall, Christine following moments after, staring at her blood caked hands.

As soon as the door shut Raoul's neck was ensnared within Erik's graceful fingers, his breaths halted and a look of panic swallowing his face. "You did this!" He tightened his grip around Raoul's caramel skinned throat. Christine looked on it terror. "You did this! If she dies; god what I'll do to you even if she lives. Drag me out of the room? As if I'm not a comfort to her? As if I'm not the only person in this world she can trust? Drag me away as if that were _better _for her? How would it feel to be ripped from the arms of your mother you twit?" Erik glared at Christine, "Ripped from the arms of your father?" she shuddered and pleaded for his freedom. "No, no, no- I have given him that before and what has he returned? He has caused me more pain and unhappiness; no longer the feelings of satisfaction and unhappiness for making the woman I loved happy, giving her the life I could not give, No. Only feelings of hate for letting the woman I love be shot by the man I've saved. You neck is so easy to pop Vicomte, why should I not?"

"If she lives," Christine interrupted, "then she won't ever forgive you, and you will be running too far for her to catch you when the police are informed of a dead Vicomte." His eyes boggled in his head, his hands shaking Raoul's throat loose as the boy swallowed in air. He leaned onto the wall, his arms stretching and supporting himself against it as he teared. "The guards don't scare me Madame. It is what she thinks that is worth fearing."

The doctor burst through the door, leaving the room with a straight face and bloody fingers. Erik glared from his place, fearing and growing sick at the idea of what had happened.

"It cut straight through her shoulder, but you will have to find the bullet so I can assess the amount of damage. She will be fine."

"What about the baby?" Christine interrupted, clear in what she was concerned for.

"I didn't even realize she was pregnant-it's hard to say for now, though I should think she would be fine."

Erik smiled, and paused before speaking "The bullet?" "Yes if you could find it I as well as she would benefit-" The doctor interrupted himself "good god quite the mask, what for?"

"A thing from my past, I won't need it much longer." Her whispered in response.

He leaned onto the wall, cringing as his rib bumped it. He looked down at his bloody shirt, tracing his fingers to where the pain was, lifting his stained white shirt upwards, revealing a half buried bullet where his heart was. He pulled it out and examined it.

"A thing from my future."


	26. Chapter 26

My Dearest Readers,

My Deepest, deepest apologies. I have had literally the craziest two weeks of my life. You should expect that I am now revitalized in my writing, have new inspiration, and will be maintaining my 24 hour posting rate again as I had previously upheld. Please allow and accept my greatest and sincerest apologies readers, I have been unkind to your inquisitive natures.

Sincerely,

Your Angel of Music.

* * *

She had sliced through her shoulder muscles when the bullet exited her system. It was raw, and just movable again as of now, and her body felt weaker and more swollen within her 2 weeks of bed rest, and 2 weeks of confinement to avoid infections. She was utterly exhausted, by the ordeal and her own pregnancy, The only comfort or excitement to her was feeling Erik's warm hand grip hers and hearing him sing her to sleep at night, the lulling voice of a siren calling her to the danger of sleep. The rest of the house was cold now, and even his heat receded.

It began to seem he came later and later in the evening as the weeks expanded themselves, she would often fall asleep before he got there. She never worried that he had stopped coming when she slept however; a vase in her room always held one more rose in the morning for every night he visited her.

Raoul peeped into the room, pity, guilt, and such torment decorating his handsome features. "Good morning." He sounded raspy and his eyes looked strange; the look of someone lacking sleep. She was surprised to have a visitor in her dungeon other than the maid or the phantom, they world avoided her like disease. "Good morning Raoul" she looked at him, a shamed expression on his face the only response to her stares. She couldn't tell if it were from his own actions or hers that he felt such mortification from. She played with a fiber on her blanket, fiddling about with the strands of wool. "How are you feeling?" she replied simply as to not trigger his questions. "I'm doing just fine, are you alright?" "Yes, Christine was wondering how you were doing." "Much better Raoul." "Oh." He turned to leave the room, but she stopped him. "I forgive you; can-" She stuttered, growing upset. "can you forgive me?" His eyes stared down at the mess he had created. "No question that I've already done so." He looked wounded "But I can't forgive myself." He dragged himself to escape the room quickly, leaving a trail of cowardice and pain behind him. She swallowed her emotions back and sat alone in the room like she always was.

Erik glided through the hallway window of the De Chagny mansion, dusky sunset at his back. He still had to lurk in the shadow just to see her. Raoul was not forgiving to himself, but it was Erik whom he blamed even more, and the feeling was mutual, though one of them held more power and more reason to lie. Policemen guarded the De Chagny place, and hunted in the streets for the demon who had 'shot and raped' this girl, the distant cousin of their beloved Raoul, whom he had taken under his privileged and kindhearted wing. The actual beautiful, innocent creature unknowing of the fate she had bestowed upon her love by saving his life. Yes, Monsieur De Chagny was a brutal liar stuck in his own ideals, and thoughts of what was moral. The wise angel knew no meeting between them would end well, and hid his visits for the leisure of the girl both enemies were now desperate to protect.

He opened the door quietly as he entered. "Erik?" She called from behind her bed curtains, glimpsing his black form sliding across the cherry wood floors, peering from her flat upright position on her bed pillows. He smiled and approached her, creating a similar countenance on the girl. "You came early," she sighed, rising and bounding towards him like a child. He hated how relieved she sounded every time she saw him, like he was going to disappear and never come back.

He placed a rose in one of her vases, this was the 15th in the glass which now brimmed with cherry flowers, the second one on her dressing table, the other bearing only 14. "Are you doing better?" he grabbed for her weak hand gently, pulling afterwards the good one to his lips. She blushed, and he kissed her cheek, making her close her eyes to relish in the touch. "Now I am." He scooped up her small frame in his arms, and carried her back to her place on the bed. His own body crawling besides her, lazily dragging it's hands up and down her waist as they spooned. Erik felt pleasure at the thought of being so close to a person who wanted him, or in this case, persons who needed him, feeling disgusting almost instantly as he thought more about it.

He smoothed his hands along the faintly ridged stomach with his gloved black fingers, feeling sick at the scars which were starting to protrude. He kissed her bump tenderly, an unnoticed tear staining her pale pink dress. She grabbed at his hand and held it in place there above her womb. He didn't even know how many weeks along she was.

Evangeline turned her head to his, and he felt vulnerable to the world with his weaknesses right in front of him, those large eyes perpetrating his thoughts since the moment he saw them. It had been 8 weeks, or 9 hadn't it? It felt like they had been parted for so much longer. Yes, she had spent 5 of those weeks alone, planning on the world to hate her-her the unwed mother. Her, the beautiful, gentle girl he had made an unwed mother. That cream colored skin was glowing. He kissed her neck and she settled her head back down onto the pillow.

"I'm so lonely when you leave," she spoke, unaware what a knife she had stabbed into him. "When your well, I'll take you away from all of this." She gripped the hand against her stomach, and felt once again his warm breath and pecks on her neck, his passion resurging at the gesture. He rolled her over, lifting himself above her small frame, pinning it down and leaning in to kiss her as she lay defenseless beneath him. The kiss bending his logic and thoughts, feeding his emotion and power as she returned it. He gasped as the link broke and he leaned in to kiss her again, feeling her heart race against his chest. They parted and he stared into her green vision.

He was comprising a plan as he thought of the only thing that separated them. The only person to ever separate him from love.

He lifted himself and snagged a red wave as he pulled away, gently holding it between his fingers as he receded from the warmth of her side.

"Please don't leave me,"

The tears welled up in her eyes and he saw how truly lonely she was, how those perfect beaming eyes mourned his leave, those scorched pink cheeks preparing for tears.

Yet he had to leave her now so she could go with him later. He pulled his corpse-like body with a new refreshed vigor at his thoughts of their future. Of his family and how he would obtain them.

Escape had become his euphemism for murder.


	27. Chapter 27

My dearest readers,

No Clue whatsoever if this chapter makes any sense. I am half asleep, and I promise my crazy life decided to take a chill pill, so I am going to be writing a lot more.

With the greatest sincerity,

your angel of music

* * *

Evangeline's feet thudded as she chased a shadow. Whether it was night creeping onto her legs or cloak leaping forwards in front of her, she couldn't tell. All she knew is he had left, and once he wants to go there is no finding him.

She crawled back to her bed dejectedly, stroking her cheek bones and nibbling on her pink nails as she waited for the anxiety to pass and calmness to allow sleep. Her eyes choked back the well of tears as she sat in the indent he had made in the bed; smelling his floral cologne in the sheets. Her obsession had become his safety, such a deep fear she held of losing the scent of red roses filling her nose as he warmed her, such fear to lose the grey eyes that even in their masters absence cut deep; god how she was melting; how weak and vulnerable she really was. How she needed to protect him anyways.

Dark green curtains caught the fresh evening wind and floated upwards as Evangeline ran to secure them, gripping the black tassels and steadying herself as she grabbed. The chill seemed to slice into her, but there, on her sill was something warm; and something she so desperately wanted, something she so desperately needed. A wool, grey cloak, lined with sheep's skin and tousling in the wind like a signal. She watched the earth below her as she snagged it from its secured position, the black ribbon which tied the blessing flew up and swirled with the wind as she ripped it out of the air too. She tied it like a perfect bow on her wrist, her reminder of the only person she should ever trust. She kissed the black silk, hoping he would see and know she was his. Her only cloak had holes in the shoulder from where her brother shot; and she was reminded now what he had aimed for; her heart. Her Erik.

But she could never hate his intentions; never hate that misunderstood love he felt for her. Just protection; just safety for his sister was all he had wanted. But he had gone about a way that had left the two of them separated despite their own acts of forgiveness to the other. A ravine pulsing it's way between two standards of what was right.

She fiddled with her silver ring once again; as she had done on the first day she met fate, as she had done every day since. The history of this ring she had not told them. Not her brother; not her sister; not her love. But her parent's knew. And she felt the love that had gone into this silver; the love of a poor man and a rich woman who suffered for her indulgence. She gotten it in a letter; and she had gotten it's past there as well. She walked over to the bed, and rested her large and beautiful eyes.

* * *

"Evangeline Noir," Her professors mumbled and slurred the name that wasn't hers. "Here" she whispered back, denying her right, her fame, and her society to protect people she had not seen since the dawn of her life, people who had not written her since they shipped the infant girl off.

The fat man hobbled away shouting names coldly from his list. Just a name on a list as she always was, always would be, thought the girl. Yet soon they would forget her name, as what would happen to the girl everyone forgot about when they were no longer obligated to care for her.

A girl with matted blonde curls tugged at her sleeve. The approach was startling to the introverted Evangeline, the girl unseen, unheard, and unworthy to be noticed. Her voice quivered as she whispered in response "Wha-what?" Her honey voice so contrasting to her appearance; red tangles crowning a pale sunken face, comforted only by the distraction of sick watery eyes that always seemed to stare at the floor. The blonde played with her tufts of hair. "I'm new here,-" the girl had continued to talk about a necessity for directions, her past, her hopes of success; yet there at the beginning of her speech Evangeline was frozen by the words. A new girl, someone who didn't see her reputation as the quiet girl, the strange girl, the French one with the funny slurred accent and drabby clothes. Perhaps they could be friends.

Yet that dream failed to last long. Evangeline's view of the potential ally was blocked by her greatest enemy, as a sturdy girl with snowy hair moved in between them. "Hello, I noticed you are not familiar, have we met?" Margaret spoke with her usual English charm, Her perfect white ringlets curled around that ivory face, draping against those rosy cheeks, small black eyes and blood-red lips. She smiled at the fresh meat, her long eyelashes rising and crinkling as she bore the image of this new girl. Her only true inclination to meet the oddity was the fact that she had seen Evangeline smile. The little blonde girl soon forgot about the mangy adolescent in the presence of this snow-haired angel, little did she know she was being lured by a siren to the death of her individuality, the death of her kindness.

"My name is Margaret, and you are?" Her hand extended expectantly. "My name is, Elizabeth." A sudden urge of bravery heaved up through the red-head's voice, and she peeped past Margaret to face the golden girl. "Mine is Evangeline." An icy glare pierced through Margaret's façade of good-humor as she turned to glare. "Yet, there isn't anyone who had asked who you were now was there?" Evangeline shook her head, now so resigned to being scorned by an adult only one year older than her. Elizabeth seemed surprised by the curt tone, but remained quiet and watching. "My apologies." Her voice was cut short as it had been, and would remain for so long.

Her voice changed from cruel to peachy in moments, erasing Elizabeth's fears instantly. "What dorm have you been assigned?" She stopped to ponder before responding eagerly. "I believe I am in room A2, so where would that mean I must go exactly?" Evangeline's heart skipped a beat. "I am A4, our rooms are right next to each other, I can take you if you'd like" Elizabeth smiled appreciatively, creating a similar reaction in Evangeline, revealing perfect white teeth in both. Margaret grimaced and traced her imperfectly shaped mouth, feeling the silver teeth that had replaced the ones she had rotted from her galore of sweets and chocolates; all gifts from her doting father which turned her rotten. "No, that won't be necessary, It is very kind of you to offer assistance em-"she hesitated as if forgetting the name of the girl she had made so miserable from childhood until her present age of 17. "Evangeline. You have such a busy life-style-yes, we wouldn't want to impend on that should we dearest Eliza?" The girl shook her head, already mesmerized by the false beauty.

"Yes," Evangeline mumbled walking off. "I shouldn't think I would have the time." Speaking the words only to convince herself that she wasn't a fool. But there her leg had been caught mid-step; those ivory fingers had snagged and ripped at them as she tugged; Margaret now clambering onto Evangeline's leg parasitically; those black eyes turning so truly malevolent. The claws dug deeper into her flesh until she bled, until she began to cry in pain and grab at the wounds, pry at the fingers. Now Margaret had her pinned, had her- No; This wouldn't happen again. And yet it happened there before her eyes, there in her mind that pain feeling so real again. Margaret grabbed and sliced as her fingernails became razors. Evangeline's stomach turning to fleshy maw in her tormentors hold, her cries growing desperate as little Eliza watched laughing. Her body sat in it's pain as the wicked Margaret had sated her lust for blood. Yet now as she had finally exhausted herself, had finally torn Evangeline bit by bit into nothing; She rolled down beside her, and stared into those terrified, agonized eyes. The blackness of them so terrifying to Evangeline; the look in them so evil-yet adoring. She clutched at her bleeding stomach, holding in the pain and organs. Those eyes; they shifted; growing lighter and lighter before her very eyes, growing more loving with each lightened shade; growing more intimidating the bluer they got. Yes. They were grey now. Piercing and beautiful, as even she still holding her stomach together; sobbing in such horrible pain, could recognize. Next it was that fair hair, it was falling in puddles of white mane onto the floor, black wild hair replacing it all, her porcelain skin rotting off the cheekbones, the jaw and shoulders broadening until the beast became manlike. Until in her beast she saw her savior; her world in the being of her enemy.

Yet she was overcome now with more terror than she had ever felt before, despite the claws, and the tormentors she had faced.

She screamed, and the world blurred between a land of dreams and reality; until at last the latter became predominant in her vision, the world turning real before her as she woke from her nightmares; from her tortures. Her vocals wretched agonized noise.

There she had awaken from her nightmares to her unknown, misunderstood fears. There in her vision was his eyes; grey, and piercing like in her dreams; staring into them and feeling just as fearful of the man she loved as she had in her nightmare.

"It was just a dream," He cooed.

No. She thought as the world tumbled into her head, as this abstract and terrifying dream made sense.

No.

This is a nightmare.

Erik was the monster.


	28. Chapter 28

He smoothed her hair out as the tear drops pelted the sheets. He had had to hide while the nurse checked on her, while Evangeline hid her tears and falsified calmness; but now he felt safe enough to sit unprotected next to her on the bed. He combed at the red swirls to distract her, to distract himself from her pain.

"What happened? What happened my dove?" He pressed, Evangeline far to breathless and terrified to explain, her chest rising and falling with her silent sobs. Did she always mourn this way, so quietly so that the world could never see?

He ignored her lack of an answer and swallowed her body into his arms, her knees folded to her chest so that she was compact and little in his arms, her thin shoulders poking him slightly.

"Please" She gasped, a new wave of tears pouring down from her eyes. "Please don't leave me. This dream was so real, so much like when it happened. What if it's all truth?" She wasn't making any sense to Erik, but he humored her and avoided the topic of her horrors any further. "Yes, I will stay. I will be here the whole night until dawn." She shook in his grip, and he lifted her back and legs in his hold, walking towards the bed.

Her gown rolled down her body stiffly, it was made of cotton and clearly a hand-me down. She would undoubtedly be cold. He kissed her head as he lowered her into the covers, and blanketed her with the thick quilt, laying on top of the blanket besides her once she was secured.

"You'll get cold, it's okay" She mumbled through her whimpers, beckoning he join her.

"No it's not." He responded icily.

She stared up at him, alarmed. "What do you mean?" His black hair fell in wild strands around his clouded gray eyes.

"What I've done to you isn't right, Evangeline." What? Her heart thrummed in further distress, and she hid the pain as best she could.

"You are unwed, and the world won't see past that." She shook her head, "But, it doesn't matter what they think, you are the only one that matters-"

He shook a bit frustrated and indeed, cold. "But it does Evangeline."

She herself grew slightly mad. "No, no it doesn't, they have never cared about me before-" His voice rose, clearly showing his madness "What am I to do?! Am I to lock you away? Am I to keep you trapped underground to resent me?!" He was shaking from his own rage, and she was cowering under her sheets.

He rose from his place besides her to pace,his hair bristling savagely, animalisticly. "I can't marry someone when I don't even exist!"

He had realized this as he left her earlier, as he left the woman that he loved to plot her own beloved brother's murder, that idea of freedom that would cost her so dearly.

He could only condemn her to one of two lives, she and the child, the first, being of course a life on the run; as he was hunted ever since his murders at the opera house; how he could ever think killing the DeChagny boy would give them anything besides short lived relief was foolish. The second, a life hidden In darkness, a life of bitter cruelty and silence, how their son or daughter would never hold any sense of society, and how no one would marry them on the basis of that alone, that is excusing the idea that, god forbid the infant resembles him.

But there was a third life for her as well.

He could leave her, how it would break her heart, how it would break his; yet he could leave her and be the enemy of the state. The man who had raped the innocent and pure DeChagny cousin. She would have their son or daughter, and though it would be a bastard child; it would grow up and be raised into society better than any child owned by Erik.

She would live in luxury, and be content and happy with her friends; perhaps she would marry. He would make sure she was happy; he would make sure of it.

How could he give her anything but that? Luxury, contented, happy; how could he give her anything like that?

He was furious to lose her; but he knew he must. He knew that his anger would turn into sorrow; he knew that her own sorrow would be gone soon enough, and she would love someone else; one of the many other men who are bound to fall for her green eyes as he was guilty of.

He was guilty of so many things the world could never know.

"I can't hide you my dove, I can't trap another flower in the dark. I can't marry you."

It had never crossed her thoughts that they would never marry. She had never thought of it; how foolish she was. She was so allured by his voice, his mind.

"No."

He couldn't say he was shocked at first by her defiant words, but he would be.

"You are selfish if you think you do not have to marry me Erik, you are utterly selfish!" He had never seen her angry before, and felt shame for having inflicted the emotion upon her.

"Can you not tell already that I want to be hidden from the world? Have you never picked up on that? All the world has ever given me were scars, and fear and hatred. Do you think because your scars are on your face that mine are less painful?"

He gaped at her, his heart thrumming.

"No, that is what you think. That because the world can't see mine I can function in it, that I can forget how horrible they have all been to me. Look at me Erik!" She screamed, her tiny body shaking.

She waved the backs of her hands in the air for him to see, tiny silver scars he had never noticed before traced up and down them. "This is from my teachers, for mumbling". She lifted her chin, tracing a ridged sliver of flesh just underneath of it, "This is from my class-mates for speaking up". She pulled up her feet, revealing cut marks and a slightly crooked and abnormal once-broken toes. "This is from my 'father' for not being his" The image of her infant toes being crushed raised the hairs on Erik's arms. She tore at her skirts, ripping them down, tearing her garments off until only thin fabric lay between her naked body and the frosty air. She walked towards him, pulling his limp hand to her abdomen to trace each lumpy mutilation, "This is from my employer, for not letting him rape me." Tears spilled down from his ice colored eyes and he looked ashamedly at the floor. She smoothed his fingers out, letting only a flat hand remain for her instruction. She smoothed it over her womb, allowing his palm to adjust and caress their child. "This is from you." He sobbed, and swallowed her in his arms.

He gasped as the tears rolled from both of their eyes. "Can I condemn you both to live in darkness?" She nestled her head on his chest, listening to his heart beat.

"The world is dark, and blind. To live with you is to live in light" She whispered, and he responded.

"Then I will never let the darkness touch you." He kissed her, and the world melted away.

It intruded soon enough as the door to her room opened, and Raoul walked in and shouted.

Temporary relief was better than no relief, Erik thought as he turned towards his prey to protect his love. A familiar braid of rope slipped from his waist to his hands.


	29. Chapter 29

Erik acted quickly, shouting orders towards Evangeline as Raoul charged him. "Get your cloak, put on all the clothes you can, and forget everything el-" His voice was interrupted as Raoul made forceful contact with his body, all the while yelling for assistance.

His body hit the floor and Raoul took siege of it, clawing at Erik's face and bashing his head onto the ground with his delicate hands, making blood seep from his scalp. Yet Erik was only toying with him; the longer Raoul kept busy with his destruction, the less notice he would take to his young sister fleeing. The less he would scream for the guards who were undoubtedly rushing up the stair case in the foyer anyways. Perhaps he should silence him completely. Erik changed positions and soon enough had pinned the weak ViComte on the ground.

Evangeline sped through the room placing garments upon herself. She had replaced the skirts she had removed and was in the process of tying her cloak when she heard the uniform trample of guardsmen feet trampling towards the room.

Her tiny fingers knotted it at last, placed gloves upon her fingers and tied a gray wool scarf around her neck. She turned to Erik in horror.

The lasso lay around Raoul's neck like a gemmed necklace, his face turning ruby colored. Erik's own face contorted with effort; his grip never ceasing although Raoul's hands clawed at them.

"No!" Evangeline screamed. It didn't phase him however, and he continued, having started something that compelled him to finish.

Raoul was going limp beneath his fingers, just a moment more, just a moment…

Evangeline thudded against him, freeing Raoul's neck an inch and enabling his breathes. Erik gasped and glared at her; those gray eyes seeming clouded by malevolence once again. "No, Erik, please, He is unconscious now, let's go."

He shook from his madness, and returned to sanity as his brain began to process her logic. "I need you to hold on to me Evangeline," She nodded, and he leaned for her to grip onto his back. She had just finished placing herself when the she heard the first bullet wiz by their heads.

Erik ran faster than he ever had, as though no girl were attached to his back, as though he were inhuman. But what he ran towards scared his feeble pregnant girl worse than anything.

It was an open window 2 stories up.

Bullets began to fly through the walls, the cowardly guards hiding behind the wooden divider. He was flying now, as though his feet weren't touching the ground. But he was stopped soon enough when a bullet slid through his arm. Hesitating to cringe only for a moment, continuing towards the window with an increased pace. And then not even hesitating, he met it.

Evangeline screamed as they flew through the open air, their bodies no longer contacted by comforting earth. Only deadly gravity. Her cloak flew upwards above them like useless wings.

It was so sudden that they were place once again, as mid-flight, Erik had twisted their bodies and grabbed onto the balcony of the room beside Evangeline's. She was gasping for breath, but was surprised to hear he was breathing evenly. He was trained for this; all of those years of parkour within the opera house coming to such an advantage, the adrenaline removing any wheezes his injured arm might have brought.

He kept his movements as limited as possible as he dropped and scaled his way downwards towards the earth. He had no intention of upsetting his unborn baby, or of risking its life more than need be. They listened to the bullets piercing through the walls above them as he made his final drop to earth.

"Raoul will be fine, he was laying down." He heard her whisper under her breath as he pulled her from the uncomfortable position on his back to her own two feet. He turned to her, making a notion of silence as he lifted his finger against his lips. She nodded and he pressed her body against the wall with his arm, bumping slightly her swollen womb. He walked silently in the snow, peering over the corner, calculating the risk of an open run towards the woods. It was low, as he determined, and he edged to corner, pressing Evangeline's body against his to kiss her before they ran. It was interrupted as he heard the front door burst open, soldiers pouring out of the large door on their side of the corner.

"Run towards home" He breathed, pointing to the woods, shoving her past the corner gently and urgently. She picked up her pace and launched herself towards the trees, catching the eye of the guards who couldn't tell perpetrator from house member. Erik got between them, creating illusion after illusion with his cloak to be perceived and shot at. He ran in the opposite direction abruptly, having the guards follow the bigger threat instead of some feeble girl. His legs ran faster and faster towards the opposite set of woods, there wasn't a high chance they could catch him if they tried at this rate. But he was in the open, and he didn't like the idea that they possibly could. He was not in his natural territory, this was open, and visible. There would be no hiding until he reached the woods. Blood droplets from his arm stained the snow.

Yes perhaps he would make it, and they should be together again. They could raise their son- yes he shouldn't assume these things but in his gut he thinks it will be a boy- Yes they will raise their son in some new place, deep into the country. They would pick strawberries every summer, have tea in the evenings, Evangeline would sing him to sleep every night, and Erik would tell him stories of the great Opera house all day long; tell him stories of the monster who once skulked its halls. The monster that was tamed by a beauty and her green eyes. Oh let him have her green eyes.

Yes, the skirts of the trees are so close now. The future is touchable, He could grasp it as if it were a thing-yet just steps away and they would be together. And they would be happy.

A bullet pierced through his leg bone, shattering and mangling it beyond working order. He collapsed there; his future flying in the opposite direction, pregnant and lost in the frozen, murderous woods, his present approaching in the shape of unavoidable and victorious guards.

"Run towards home" He whispered, praying that she got there. The guards came closer to their prize, but Erik only scooted forwards and away as they laughed and kicked snow at him. He struggled as they walked leisurely. He pushed forward though it pained him. Only to make it to the trees. Only to be free, and be with her-but that hope is dashed. That dream is gone. He could never climb fast enough, he could never hide with all this blood-ink on the map that would lead them to him. He will be captured, and hung, as the hangman deserves so rightfully in the end.

He had been the hangman for so long, and the blood he now lost was little compared to the blood he had spilt.

"Run towards home," Erik thought.

There would be no strawberries in the summer, no tea in the evenings, no singing his young son to sleep, all there will be are stories.

Stories of a monster .


	30. Chapter 30

The kitchen door opened as easily as it had when she'd fled through it. It was surprising considering the damage done to it, the slamming, the fires, the rusted hinges. Yet nonetheless it opened for her, directing her to the place she was meant to be. Back to the monster's lair.

Her stomach was growing sick to think about him.

Her anxieties we're growing uncontrollable, and she soon found herself sobbing there on the filthy floors, trying to calm herself for the sake of their baby.

Evangeline wandered in the dark towards the dressing room, feeling her way around in the blackness, and following the path of memories.

She stumbled towards the supplies on the vanity, and lit a match which soon in turn was used to light a candle. The room illuminated and she felt the past pierce into her chest like glass. There on the floor, the same ripped dress, on the table a bottle of medicine and stale wine. Blood stains on the carpet from when-oh god. What had he done to the men who had attacked her?

She felt her fears towards him and her worries reach their peak. God let him be safe. Let him come home. Perhaps, he already was. Perhaps he was waiting. He had always been faster than her.

She pried at the glass, clawing at it desperately for several minutes before having the smallest sign of result. It cracked open just slightly, and from there she slid her fingers in, jamming open the sliding glass pane.

She lifted from the dresser her candle, and slid past the threshold of reality, shutting the door behind her. Evangeline thudded down the stone steps hastily, clutching her stomach as if it would stabilize her infant. She stumbled and leaned against the wall, adjusting her speed to keep them both safe from a deadly trip.

The floors leveled out, and it was a smooth decline towards the lake from here. She clasped onto her candle; the only safety in this vast darkness.

There was the Gondola, docked the way Erik had left it. She noticed in it's bed was more blood, but it was dried, aged and horrible. What had he done down here? What has he been? She was reminded he was a killer more than ever now.

She rowed slowly, hoping desperately he would call for her to turn back for him, that he would show up as he always did; behave like the immortal he usually was. But despite her pace, it never ceased, and she continued until bumping the boat against the rocky edge.

She leapt onto the shore, and collapsed, releasing all her fear and anxiousness. This unseen world seemed so dark without him; so intimidating. Childhood tales of monsters filled her mind, and she found herself checking for the beasts as she sobbed. So she would wait, and wallow in this fear.

Was this what had made him so wicked before?

Stuck in the soils of fear as a child, learning to fear nothing and being taught by no one. Teaching yourself what is right and wrong down here with the monsters of your imagination, not a soul to talk to, not a soul you could say you owned.

He was not mad by any form of natural state. No, he should have been perfectly sane should the world have given him kindness, pitied this poor creature who had done no wrong yet had been blamed for all that was wrong.

She smoothed her stomach with one hand and wiped away her tears with the other. He would not suffer any longer when he returns, they will be at peace, and understanding with one another. Should he return.

The thought prickled the red hair on her neck, and her green eyes looked stained by bloody tears, yet she decided to cease her crying.

She began to sing, sing like he had always wanted in hopes that he would here.

She turned her head towards her swollen belly and started to hum to the unborn child.

"Angel of Night,

Life so strange,

Life so dark,

Life so cruel,"

She paused as a single tear escaped and rolled down her lips.

"Yet you are light,

Bright, Bright, light

Brighter than they ever knew,

But my dark knight,

Cloaked in black,

Maimed by their hands,

Respected by their minds,

My sweet,

Angel of Nigh-"

Footsteps thudded above, and Evangeline grew silent as she listened. "Where is she? We know she's here, the poor girl."

She heard Erik's musical laughter, and shuddered as she soon realized this was all a sick joke to him, a game. Her heart fluttered anyways, yet her stomach grinded in nausea knowing he had been caught.

"I heard a voice singing you scum! How do you get below to that hell you demon!?"

Erik was laughing now hysterically, manically. "If you fall as Lucifer fell, you can never rise again!" The room grew silent "Have you ever heard of the Phantomess; rather a beautiful baroness with the voice of an angel; who died here in the ground beneath which you stand. Within which I lived." He stated, and she caught on. He was covering her foolish tracks so she could run. "I rather stole the idea from her"

Guards shouted and she heard a guttural cough from above stairs, and gasped as she heard to her own distress Erik's screams and the hustle of guard feet banging against his body from above. Erik whispered through his pain into a crack in the corner that was one of his sound tunnels, and Evangeline heard with full clarity the meaning.

"Hide your face so that the world can never find you"

Hide. Hide and he will die. Hide, and her child shall be fatherless, her life meaningless. Instead, she against her natural character, plotted, and sang into the crack so that It sounded above.

"Weep,

my pitiful beasts,

My men,"

Erik's hair pricked like the rest of the men in his room; god how ghostly it sounded, even more ghostly than himself. He felt a terror he had never felt before strike him.

"Silent,

Sliver,

My snakes,

My friends"

"What are you doing!?" A guard jabbed at Erik, and he shuddered. Shaking his head in shock. He had never been able to teach her; yet this, this was so penetrating; not a soul went untouched, un-shook by the venom in her airy angelic voice.

"Flee from this place,

Or there will be no men to flee,

Run far and quickly,

For the phantomess sees."

The guards pulled at Erik's legs in their fear, dragging him away. Yet in their stupor, they had lost all perception of what went down around them, while Erik had kept careful track in his.

A brick sat under his cloak as the first guard dragged him around the dark corner, the rubble on the ground cutting into his back. The two had a momentary window of isolation, and thus a momentary window for action. Erik wielded the brick, and launched himself upwards abruptly, adrenaline masking the pain of broken bones. He commenced to smashing his block hard into the young man's temples before he could scream. What a waste of that handsome face, Erik thought almost evilly. He dragged himself and the officer's utility knife into a nook in the shadow, waiting for one more of the five men to accompany him home that night.

The second arrived momentarily as he had predicted, and before he could shout for help, Erik was behind him, slitting the poor man's throat without hesitation. A third and a fourth arrived to the same fate, the fifth he had yet to see, as the man had throughout the entire business of his transportation stayed behind, whispering tips into the ears of one of these corpses. Even Erik couldn't hear the voice, or see the face. For they had him blindfolded up until entering the Opera. And upon thus, this fifth man stayed far behind in the darkness.

Yet this man approached him now, and was met with the same fate; but a mere unintentional error of movement made his death slower; if he ever did die. Erik glared down at his hunted beast, staring to his horror into the eyes of the only man he could never kill.

Evangeline raced up the stairs to discover whether her fears of Erik's death had surfaced. What she discovered was mutilated heaps of flesh circling around the man she loved like he was their master.

The closest body was still alive, she collected, and she fought the rising vomit in her stomach as she moved closer, Erik leaning above him silent and trembling, some clump of snow pressed against the young man's wounds.

She moved silently, in fear Erik was injured, in fear he was mortally wounded. In fear he would die.

Yet there on the floor sat something that killed a part of Evangeline, and the light, the façade she saw Erik as, would die along with it.

Long jagged marks rested the neck of Raoul, where a monster had clawed him.


	31. Chapter 31

Raoul's blood rolled down his neck like a river, the steady bank carved from his pearly skin. He grabbed at the wound desperately, pushing the skin back together to prolong the bleeding, choking out breathes as he lay dying.

"What did you do!?" Evangeline screamed, running forward to her brother, kneeling besides him. "What did you do!?"

Erik sat stunned, staring into the eyes of the enemy he never wished to harm. "No-No-I couldn't have known-"

Evangeline shuddered "I don't care! I don't bloody well care! Do something!" She pleaded into his eyes, and Erik was shattered, the weak man he truly was surfacing in his eyes, flooding his mind. He choked out his words; "Needle-Needle and thread".

Evangeline launched herself towards the dressing room, a needle and thread. Oh god, how fate itself had placed those two things in the pockets of her old dress; one which hung now neatly in that room.

She scrambled towards the hooks, ripping from them her dress and dragging her fingers through its pockets, until then her finger was pricked by the needle tip. She seized the precious tool and held it above the candle, cleaning the metal by the flame. she held in her palms the spindle and precious metal like a gem, running faster than she ever had towards her dying brother, as Erik held together Raoul's neck.

She stumbled on rubble and her hands hit the earth in a dirty pile of glass. She shuddered, recognizing it as the kind that had cut her long before in her first days in the opera house.

Raoul was gasping now; and she heard his poor and failing body seize in the distance.

She lifted herself up, collected the dropped spindle and pulling the needle that had stabbed into her hand out. It would have to do unsterilized.

Evangeline skidded into the room and Erik grabbed for the thread, working it into Raoul's flesh without hesitation and with swift surgical precision.

Evangeline smoothed Raoul's forehead as Erik worked, kissing her dear brother and apologizing through her tears. His fair skin decorated in shining droplets. His eyes staring up in fear, blinking sleepily from blood-loss.

Half of Raoul's throat had been stitched when a raspy noise came from his throat, faint and beautiful. "Tell Christine I love her." With each word the stream of blood thickened, going down only when he ceased to speak.

"No, No, tell her yourself" Evangeline cried the words, as if to convince him. Erik hesitated. There was too much blood. He continued despite it all, despite Raoul's own acceptance of death and probabilities of it.

His pale hand reached towards Erik's and the phantom looked down at his nemesis with a new light shining in his eyes. "I forgive you." Shock dominated Erik's features, and Raoul made his final request for the woman they had both loved. "Take care of her, my angel-"Raoul cringed and a thick wave of blood streamed from his neck. Erik's distraction made the needle produce fatal movement; it had pierced the thin protection his jugular held. Redness flooded the room and Evangeline was screaming cradling his head as the blood soaked them both.

His chocolate eyes faded away. This thing was no longer the brother she loved. There before her was just a body, with it's great soul departed. It's beauty no longer existent.

He was dead.

There lay a silence, and a sickness in the room.

Their two red bodies sat drenched in the mess they had made. This was the distance he was willing to go for love. This was a place she could never follow him. He was a killer. Perhaps she had never understood the gravity of it until now. Perhaps she had just never understood.

Erik lifted his gaze to her eyes. His shaking body in pain, his mouth silent, his entire form electrified. She was staring into space, her beautiful features showing no expression of pain, or loss, or love, of feeling. He had killed her. This had killed her.

He could not recollect who had been the first to let tears fall. But soon it had happened, soon they were together in a way they had never dreamt. Had never wished to be.

He slid his legs from underneath of himself, disrupting the silence for the sake of his pain. Evangeline looked solemnly at the beast.

She shuffled closer to him, and he wordlessly stared.

She grabbed the knife from the ground and dried it on clean parts of his shirt. She only rose to pour water on the knife and needle, and burn them with the candle. He sat trusting her and fearing her. Evangeline dug it into his leg, dislodging the bullet as he screamed. She scooped it out of his leg unfeelingly and stitched, his leg stiffening as she scraped at his tissues, dragging the thread through his bruised skin. She started on the arm soon after. Erik felt a slight comfort in her being closer to him despite this all. Her sweet smell a reminder of their love-of her forgiving heart. The smell of blood on her clothes a reminder of that unforgivable deed he had committed.

She continued on to grab a splint of wood, and rip her dress fabrics down. She wrapped and bowed the makeshift splint on his shattered shin. When she had finished, she returned to her place besides Raoul. Sitting in a puddle of his blood, laying down in it against him as her shoulders shook with tears.

"Evangeline, Evangeline please speak to me,"

"What am I to say? What am I to say to you Erik. There are no words to describe what you have done to night. There are no words to forgive your actions either."

His chest throbbed and so did hers. That love, that love that was now so separated by this point of pain in their memories. Would she leave him, did she love him?

She rose, her red hair dripping with Raoul's death, her green eyes sobbing while her shoulders shook. She rose and walked towards the dressing room, and walked down the stairs. The boat waiting as she had left it. Erik stumbled from behind watched her descend into the darkness he had condemned her to.

"What did I do?" He whispered.


	32. Chapter 32

My Dearest Readers,

Hey guys, I suck. I promise to be more consistent, but if it is any consolation I've been horribly busy. I'm a sucky person..:( But I love you all, and I'm not forgetting about you.

Your Angel of Music

* * *

6 months had past and she was still silent, still cautious as she ever had been. His perfect lips sang words of sorrow into her ears daily, but they went unrecognized by silence. They would share a bed, but there was a coldness that had never been there before, and his heart wrenched every night she sobbed herself to sleep.

But the love was not all gone. It couldn't possibly be all gone.

Her stomach had grown large and rounded, and perfect. Perfection was the least he could describe her as. Even in her pain she was glowing, radiant with their child sprouting, his seed taking root-that beautiful child which was his fingerprint on her.

It was not that she pushed him away ever, no, that was not the bridge between them. It was that he felt haunted to see his eyes on her face, and she felt saddened to see the hands of his murderer caressing her large pregnant belly. But she never refused his kisses on her cheek, or his paternal strokes. She loved him too much for that. Something she failed to say, and he failed to assume.

Erik had kept his word to Raoul-at his own peril. It had been strenuous distracting the guards from the opera house, but it had been a necessity. With her wound and condition, Evangeline could not travel for long, and they could not stop for rest as Erik was infamous in even the smallest regions of Paris. But more importantly, if he left he could not care for the woman he had widowed.

Christine had worn black everyday since Erik placed the Vicomte's pale body on her doorstep, dressed in roses and stitched around the neck for her convenience. The funeral was held only days later, and both he and Evangeline lay in the shadows of the event, observing the pain they had inflicted. Erik observing the pain he had inflicted. Evangeline couldn't see past her own quiet tears.

She had begun to gain weight, Christine. Though it pleased Erik to see her eating finally, it also in a way disturbed him. She had always been a peckish thing, eating only what satisfied her appetite or occasional craving. Never the glut, never wasteful as opposed to the common example of most wealthy socialites. Now she had become ravenous, and guilt-stricken, eating to distract and numb herself.

He heard her whisper in the night her regrets for not having supported him. For not having been as dedicated as she was before their maternity issues. But she had never been any less dedicated, Erik had decided. Perhaps frustrated, but never lacking the furious love she held for Raoul DeChagny. She only said these things to torture herself, and in doing so tortured Erik. Erik who so greatly held the tendency of deserving that pain.

She was sobbing now, as Erik looked through the glass of her windows. His chest burned, a feeling he used to have whenever someone made her cry but now he was the assailant, destroying himself inside out. Yes, he felt the burning of agony whenever someone so much as scathed his dearest, and now it was him. He who had harmed his own beautiful Christine…Evangeline was waiting at home.

He slid silently down the windowsill, his black cloak protection from the guards which patrolled this shadowy wall. He wandered then against the walls, and through the burning snow towards the tree-line. His hands shaking with emotional upset all the while. There was no escape. It was here, or it was home that he would always see the woman he loved in pain.

The leaves brushed against him in the dense wood, and he clawed through the branches towards the Parisian street lamps in the distance. His tender knee had been a concern of Evangeline, something she commonly voiced before his trips despite her solemn quietness as of late. Though it had mostly healed, he found himself favoring it slightly. Not only was he hideous; but he felt his grace was gone too.

What an old man he had become with his fears and physical limitations. How had Evangeline ever seen anything beautiful in him? How could she ever see that again, after all he had done?

He couldn't let this pain go on any longer. He couldn't feel unloved by her any longer. His feet hit the cobblestones of road and he lingered in the tree shadows before distributing himself to another cluster of darkness.

But little to his knowledge she still saw him as something above all men. He wasn't a murderer in any natural level .It had been forced upon him, and she, despite the intensity, and cruelty of this fateful incident, understood his small level of innocence. But perhaps innocence was a foul word to use for his predicament. Maybe it was more the principle that cruelty is karma, and the more one is burdened with it the more they burden others. Such a simple and domineering truth in the case of Erik and his unfortunate life. But every time his fingers met her skin, she felt quivers run down her flesh knowing her own brother had met his fate by them, accident or not… that her own blood had flowed down his long, slender palms in the form of her last bit of kin. Now she was completely alone in the world.

Until her baby is born. Their baby.

He kicked nearly every hour now-and despite her own discomfort she felt eased at the idea that he was fierce, fresh and vibrant, growing inside her. Yes, she imagined a son fighting like it's father. Fearing it would have to.

The door swung open and Erik walked down the stairs to the lair, hobbling slightly from his tender knee. Evangeline walked over to the port to meet him, to know he was safe once again. She watched him float towards her silently, staring at the floor of his boat. "Erik," She felt pain surface at seeing him so worn, and skinny in her distance, how unhappy he was. How they both were.

"Yes?" He moved towards her, and planted his palm on her swollen pregnant hump. She planted a soft kiss on his lips, and shock took over his expressions. She had never denied his kiss, but she had never in the 6 months of depression they shared, kissed him of her own will. He returned it after recovering, and soon pulled away to examine her tear stained face. "What is it my love?" He stroked her cheek, and she leaned into his hand. "I've pushed you away." To Evangeline's own surprise Erik had broken down sobbing. And she felt weak. Had she been the one to torture him all this time? He kneeled helplessly on the ground, skinnier than he had ever been. "Oh god, have I been the one to inflict this pain unto you?" She herself sobbed and cradled his head, feeling it shake with each tear it released. "Never you, no, I have done this to myself."

She lowered her head to look into his eyes, by now they both kneeled on the ground. "I'm so sorry Erik." She choked out, and at the words Erik's red stained glacier eyes greeted hers. "Never be sorry for this-for this sin I have burdened us with. This is my fault. This is all my fault, but what kills me is how many others suffer because of my evils and torments." She by now was leaning into his chest, and he was cupping her head, treasuring the tenderness of her against him. "God-God how I love you and how little you deserve any of—" She pulled away and a look of agony spread onto her face. She clutched at her pregnant belly.

Erik held onto her hand and looked in horror and disbelief; she clutched onto him. Her scrunched face soon opened for a strangled scream to escape, her small hands digging into his own. His eyes raced over the image in panic and helpless terror. She screamed again and by this time Erik held her enclosed into his arms, and was flitting towards their room, towards the bed. He paused half way there to examine a wetness that now streamed down her pale legs onto his arm. It was blood.

It was as red as any he had ever spilt.


	33. Chapter 33

The feeling of un-sated hatred was burning. She rested-unconscious, and lovely-but so terribly pale. His head never lifted from her womb for more than a moment, the heartbeat of their child was strong. But Erik's blood was slithering in his veins, slow despite his adrenaline. It felt too close. And he in his desperate nature-had nearly imagined himself digging the child-out despite the pain it would cause the mother. Despite the utter agony he might inflict.

This was the only person in this world that would ever belong to him, and no matter his love for Evangeline-she could never be anything but wildflowers binding themselves to a rusted sharp gate- soon to wither and leave him when it became known that the cold metal spears were not so hospitable to her. But this child was as sure as the cobblestone that ran through both the worlds of the wilds and savage prisons. Sure to propel itself to great places in this world- a road that would always root from him, and lead to him.

If it came to the choice between them though-he lifted his ear and head from their unborn child and stared down at the love of his life, tracing her facial curves and cheek bones, remarking on the perfect chisel of them. How could he ever part with her, with this love? Could he choose only one if all hell sprung loose? Would he even hold the option to choose? He prayed thanks to the god he didn't believe in that he had not had to tonight.

Her fair eyes opened and a tear escaped as she clutched at her womb. "It was false labor-and heavy spotting." Erik clarified and stroked her hair. She leaned her face into his large hand and sobbed, all her immediate fears melting with the hot streams of terror running down her white face. He lay down beside her in the bed, reeling her into his arms and whispering comforts.

"Erik-What if I am too small? What if he can't get out and I kill him!" She stared blurry eyed into his, and he only kissed her forehead silently. She truly was his other half-the good in him that questioned things in the same way and worried for the same things. They truly were two halves of a mutilated and sad soul.

His own chest rose and fell with anxiety and he caught himself subtly panicking. Something he hoped Evangeline wouldn't notice. She didn't through her own shakes and moans of horror. His white shirt now turned clear as it absorbed sobs. Soon the sobs however, ceased, and she rose from their sheets. Apologies replaced her cries in numerous amounts.

"Why are you so ashamed of fearing things?" He stared from the mattress in disbelief, the indent she made in the bed slowly fading. "You shouldn't be burdened by me Erik, and I have only burdened you."

He grew frustrated and ornery by what she said-was this really all in fear of being burdensome? For all he knew their love could be her attempt at avoiding being troublesome. "Evangeline, look at me." There was a straight blackness in his tone that brought renewed shame and displeasure to her eyes upon contact. "Have I ever made you feel that way?" She stared at the floor, unsure of an answer. He sat up from the bed, and walked over towards her, as softness returning to his demeanor. "Evangeline, look at me. The one you say you burden." She looked up at his grey eyes, locking onto the safety in them. Yet she ignored the beastliness of the face they belonged to, forgetting it was there. It proved Erik's point.

"You are the only beautiful creature," He lifted her hands and kissed each knuckle on them, "that has failed to burden me with pain. You have filled me with remorse for my sins, perspectives on forgiveness, and the love I have been missing my whole life," He lifted her tear streaked face and looked into her wild and puzzled green eyes. "But you have never burdened me. You have built me from your own burdens. And I am as close to a man as a beast can ever be." He kissed her lips, and felt salty tears as they rolled down against his lips. He lifted his eyes to her, surprised at her continued tears.

"How can we both be giving so much without realizing it?" She spoke with a tremor.

"Because that's love." He kissed her softly again, and kneeled to the ground to listen to their unborn infant.

A strong heartbeat, thrumming away like it's fathers, despite it's damages and stresses. Yes this was his child, his baby. He shifted her ruffled dress and kissed her exposed creamy skin, feeling his infant kick at his lips on her stomach in response. She held his head there and smoothed his hair, playing with the thick threads of black webbing, in calmness, in peace.

"What If I'm too small to have him Erik?" He stood and looked at her. "That won't happen," He felt sickness brew within the ecstasy what he saw as their re-bonding. She was frail and petite…What if this beautiful thing they made, what if it would be the end of her?

He pulled her in towards his chest, placing his lips against her hair and his polished face against the red waves, the marred half exposed to the open air and unnoticing of its vulnerability due to a greater weakness in his arms.

"What makes you say it is a 'him' my dove?"

"Because I dream of your perfection in every note of this masterpiece-I dream of your every feature in him, I dream of giving him the chances you didn't have, giving him the benefit of what we know. Because I imagine a son for its father in every dream I've had. Because women have caused you pain Erik, have destroyed you."

"I destroy myself"

"But who would ever be strong enough to build you again-only a son, someone to protect you Erik."

So this is why she wanted a boy-to protect its father from the world if they ever came to close. To protect its father from the threat of himself and all who might harm him when his twilight years arose, and they both were far too feeble for their own safety. When the world might kill an ugly old man for the sins of his past. How she plotted for his survival. How…weary and weak she appeared as of the moment.

He smoothed his hair and guided her to bed. Tucking her in like a child.

"I love you" He said, only her words could confirm forgiveness

"As we both do you" She said dreamily- her eyes drooping from the tiredness stress brings upon a pregnant girl.

He kissed her lips and walked away. That was exactly what she was-just a girl. Just a girl thrust into the world of adults by love and pain and horror. But all would be peaceful for his angels, both she and the son destined to protect him. But for now He protected them both. And he protected Christine. He walked towards the Gondola, pushing off from the boat ledge, planning a route in his head that would allow him to glide freely through the Parisian streets to ensure Christine's peace of mind, to just see her and know he was doing right by a dying man's wish.

But he never needed to leave.

Christine sat there in the shadow of the Opera hall, more silent than even the phantom, more murderous than he had ever been. A piece of silver in her hands, preparing to tear into the flesh of what her tormentor loved most. Only a few more steps towards her dressing room; open the mirror, down the stairs-yes. She remembered the path to darkness quite well. Didn't she?


	34. Chapter 34

Christine's chocolate curls hid her face quite well in the darkness, blocking the light from reflecting off of her ebony skin when Erik strode past. Her fine pink lips pursed in hatred when he walked past, snarling silently, and craving to sink her blade into his neck. But she knew now that the ultimate suffering was to be without love. Without the only person you were meant for.

It was enough to drive the sanest of them all mad, and the most tender-hearted people murderous. That revenge which poisons the victim's heart.

He was out of the building before she had dared to move. She took her time being silent, afraid to alert anyone of her placement. Though she knew the only one left in this building was her prey. Or perhaps that should be plural.

She had wanted a baby so desperately, she had wanted Raoul's baby more than anything. But the fates could not grant her happiness anywhere she turned. Her only peace in life was the day they were married. She held no regrets, or wishes for a different path. She only wanted their family. But the trouble with marriages is how often the problem arises after the vows are spoken. In this case, she would be barren of Raoul's accord, and not by his intention.

All she wanted was the fullness of a pregnant belly, the feeling of her husband stroking their sweet unborn child, a mixture of them both with chocolate ringlets and Raoul's beautiful fair eyes.

But she could never have that. And she could never have peace again with Raoul's beautiful being buried 6 feet into the dirty soil, a bitter grave vandalized by red roses and black ribbons which seemed to mock instead of apologize.

Yes, he would know this pain and misfortune, and soon Evangeline's corpse would be covered in the tulips Raoul was so fond of giving her. Her young baby swaddled in Christine's arms, dug all the way from the pit of its mother's abominable carcass.

How she would dote upon it. It would be beautiful in her arms, a good thing to come out of all this evil. But what if it should look like Erik? Could she stand to stare into the face of her Raoul's murderer and send it words of love and kisses. Would she not go mad?

She was pausing in the hall now, her fair face growing red with rage. The mother can keep it if it is not satisfactory.

She wandered into her dressing room, delusional by grief and mental illness. "Think of me, think of me fondly, when we've said goodbye," She chuckled and slid the door open.

They had turned her into a monster and she knew it. And she dreaded it. But it was far too late to be human again, as they had taken every bit of her heart and shredded it, slitted it. And she had broken it herself, everyday she was unhappy with all the beauty and happiness Raoul brought to her, all the love. Every day she had made him feel like he was a failure for something he couldn't help.

Oh god, the pain is unbearable. If only she might kiss him again, and stroke his chestnut hair. If only she could love him the way he deserved. Hot tears were spilling down her cheeks silently. But she continued on, leaving small water droplets smeared onto the rubble covered floor.

She slid open the mirror as quietly as she could, and walked down the stairs with as much haste as silence would permit, that silver instrument dangling in her smooth milky palms.

An opening, silent and peaceful heaven before her, with its piano scores falling in excess from the shelves onto the floor. A small yarn basket in the corner full of white yarn, woven delicately in the shape of baby's blanket. It looked out of place with the marble busts and melting wax. Like something fresh and pure in this darkly beautiful place. A path in the opposing corner beckoned Christine forward. Down past a kitchen, and many shut doors. Drawing her closer to the one at the end of the hall, with a slight crack of candle light showing the room is open and occupied. She pushed the door forward, hearing a faint squeal to her displeasure. But the form on the bed was not the slight bit distressed by noise, too fast asleep to recognize a predator.

She tossed and whimpered, but remained unconscious, her fingers clutched at her belly and her lips whispered words no one could understand. But her body soon relaxed and Christine held the courage to continue forwards towards her goals and evils.

She was a lovely creature when she slept, her dark eyelids, purple and beautiful, complimented by thick eye-lashes and perfect skin. The look of peace on her face when she wasn't having nightmares.

But Christine would be the nightmare she never woke up from, she would be the one that ended all good dreaming and caused contortions in her faces expression. The one to cause her agony in attempts to cause another the same pain.

The one to destroy the last of Raoul in this world to pay for the anguish it would cause his murderer. But maybe she was not the last of him, as she glared at that swollen belly. That would be hers, and it would have Raoul's fair and perfect eyes. A little Edmund perhaps, or Anna-she would have time to name the baby later.

She walked closer to Evangeline, and pulled out her knife, posing it above her stomach, preparing to slice towards the baby, Christine's baby. Yes this was hers. It was the least she deserved.

Her swift fingers assembled themselves into formation on the blade, and soon she was in every way prepared to end a life. She was mad, organized, and In love.

The blade spiraled from the air at an angle, digging into soft pale skin, waking and tormenting the victim.

Evangeline screamed from the top of her lungs as cold metal dug into her flesh.


	35. Chapter 35

Sorry guys, finals have been rough as heck. If you are also Doctor Who fans, I've come up with another story named _To dust_, so I'd really like some of your absolute fantastic coverage on that new story. Since I am on break, I am planning to get really regular with updates, so be prepared for those emails telling you I've updated.

Erik trod through the snow, his thick black cloak masking him from the wind and guards in his comfortable spot within the shadows.

Swirls of white landed on his eyelashes, and he felt the coldness melt against his cheek, into his scalp through the dense black hair on his head. This, the cold snow, the black night which no proper creature stirred, which no beloved beast trembled far from it's doorstep, this was his world. His feet making marks in an un trodden path, his flesh burning and his face shieleded from the judgement of snowflakes.

This was his. He flourished in what everyone, every weaker being might fall and succumb to; dark death and freezing loneliness, the coldness that surrounded him always, was fuel for him in his passion, in his love and appreciation for the rare goodness in people. In his condemption of the evils in human spirit, however small they might be.

They all deserved to burn for their wickedness.

He shivered finally, as the frost cut through his warm façade of peace.

Yet he was worse than all he had scorned, and scorched and ripped in his teeth. He was the ultimate evil, and now, despite his actions, had earned the ultimate goodness in her, and in her frail body- the only pureness he could ever have in life growing in her pale belly.

But he runs now to the other woman, in regret for his sins, in compliance to his loyalties and his small fraction of morality.

Yet there, before him the guards scramble about, here in the DeChagny residence, their mouths opening in whisper soon in shouts, their feet running in mad scramble towards carriages and free horses. Now they flee, and leave behind their fragile unprotected enchantress, Christine.

What has happened?

"He's taken her," One shouts, his blue cap and gold detailing decorated by snow. But who has taken her? "She is in the opera house, we have to move and get reinforcements, someone heard a woman's screams near the building, and her guards lost her around there."

His lips quivered in stress, as the only woman he knew to be there was his life, were his lives.

He launched through the woods, his black cloak soaring behind him, the snow dotting against his pearl mask. The street, what a distance he was from the street, and what a distance from the opera was the street.

Now his brain was ticking, and his heart was throbbing. Faster, his feet dodging the spots illuminated by moonlight, his eyes adjusted to the further darkness he exposed himself to. Each swift footstep landing him closer to her, closer and closer until his feet were flying on the cobblestones of Paris, past policemen and civilians in plain vision, his mask evident and clear to their vision as he ran towards and past them all in the cold night.

The warmth of light posts radiating from above, the fear broiling him from the inside, closer, closer. A trail of men chasing the tips of his cape. A dark the men and the beast they chased, and shortened the distance between the beast and the Opera house.

His feet pounded through the doorway of a charcoal kitchen, the voices of guards in front of him making him pause and analyze. He climbed through a charcoaled gap in the kitchen wall, and from there scrambled through the crawlspace in between the walls towards what he believed to be Christine's mirror. He went as far as he could go through the dark wall space, and climbed upwards on the buildings structural woods, until he had maneuvered through burnt space and sharp glasses to the rafters above his guards, in the ideal spot to spy and to progress towards his love. His feet were silent as they slid swiftly above the chaos below. From here he was above the halls, and descending slowly into the shadow.

The mirror was soon before him. He stepped through with urgency, and ran down the stairs with all the power in his strong legs. The gondola was gone. Why was gone? Who had taken it?

He sunk into the icy water, and swam in haste towards his fear. Towards his life, and his lives. The cold feeling colder with his stark and painful fears.

He had almost reached the shore when a distinct color began to plague his swim, and stain his mask. It was blood, a river of blood polluting his eyes.

He scrambled upwards from the water and shouted for her, screamed and pleaded for her. For his dove, for his Evangeline. But the world was silent except for a moans, and crying, and a humming.

A very familiar humming.

"Christine." He gasped and whispered in his terrors. And soon fury rose from his chest, like the sound of hell and scrawls of the devil piercing like music through the quietness, her name cutting through the dark like a razor slit. "Christine!"

He stumbled forward, tracing a bloody trail towards the bedroom.

"Eva," He sobbed, seeing a crumpled pale figure strewn in its own blood, thick red hair paving the soiled floor.

He collapsed besides it, her perfect face wasn't in his vision, her soft body so ripped by stabs. He traced her arm and cried against her face, shocked to feel her tiny fingers clinging for him. Shocked to hear her dying words, and shocked to see her forgiving face look in pity at his. Her other hand clasped at her belly. "She took him" She cried, clutching at her opened womb, he face tightening in agony between sobs and screams. Her blood streaked irises looking into his eyes. "She took him Erik, please, please just get our baby." Her sobs bringing more blood in streams down her stomach. Her eyes growing dimmer, her voice growing soft and urgent and more fearful. "Please, please, just get our baby. She took him from me, Erik," her eyes released a tear, and her lip quivered, and she repeated her fearful pleas. "She took him from me."

Her eyes began to shut, and her breathing grew slower.

It was a boy.


	36. Chapter 36

**Hey guys! I just got a job so things have been pretty hectic ^_^ hoping everything is good with you all, and thank you all so much for reading and for the comments**

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Erik pressed firmly onto Ophelia's bleeding stomach, folding the flaps of tissue back into their proper place, struggling for something to secure them with. Now he would make the choice to save his son or to save its mother. He pulled a ribbon from her long red hair and tied her body back in place, kissing her on the nose and staring in horror at her unconscious face. He ran through the building into the streets, his hands soaked in her blood, his face covered in a stained mask.

"Help!" He screamed, his voice scratchy and shocked. "Help me! My-" He had almost called her his wife. Oh god, how he condemns her before god himself, he should have married her as soon as he could. But now she was dying and facing a higher power he couldn't control. He wouldn't have it.

"Help me! Please god help!" He ran through the quiet night time streets alerting households with his musical screams. Soon he had reached the doctors, and was slamming on the door with all his power, a line of guards marching from some distance down the street. The hesitation from the sleeping professional urging him to scale the building walls to wake him. And so he did, shocking an elderly man and his wife out of slumber. "Hurry, please, hurry my-" He hesitated with his lie. "my wife- something terrible has happened to her."

The man stumbled upwards, too shocked to ask questions, and approached Erik unassumingly. "Monsieur? Where is she, what is wrong?" He failed to comply with an answer and instead lifted the small man upwards from his feet, looked around for his bag of doctoral instruments, and carried them both out the window to the shock of his wife, down the scaffolding of his home and only resting on the familiar shadow a Parisian street. The man clutched at his heart for fear, but soon felt as calm as he could be per the situation as Erik ran down the street with him in his arm, avoiding patrols and pedestrians to the man's apparent drowsy suspicion and overall sense of confusion.

Sooner than later they were in through the kitchen door, surging down the steps and lunging towards Evangeline's crumpled form, her breathing faint but still evident. "You are such a fighter my dove," Erik had dropped the man and was stroking her cheek. The man hesitated in splendor of the cavern, how unknown he and every other had been to it. "Hurry!" Erik urged, a sense of violence laced in his tone. The man didn't budge finally realizing who the man in the mask was. "You are _him _aren't you?" Erik nodded solemnly near his fleeting joy, smoothing her cheeks. "Please, my Evangeline, she isn't anything like me. She doesn't deserve to die. Please." The old man, kind hearted, recognized sincerity and obliged. After all, he could condemn the monster but not the innocent girl for dying for him.

He opened his kit, just as Evangeline opened her eyes faintly. "Erik," She whispered. "Yes, Yes I'm here," He looked lovingly down into her eyes, those green and wild irises he dared to see light in. "Where is he?" Their baby, the one he had left for her. He paused, and those sweet eyes grew desperate. She was going to bleed out if her heart sped up. "He's sleeping now, don't worry. We have him." She smiled. "You pick his name Erik," she spoke but her smile grew pained as the doctor stitched her together again. "shh, shh, I'm here, hold my hand." Erik smiled, as she gripped. "You are so strong my dove," He spoke soothingly, his voice like music. And she screamed, as if in labor as she should have been, instead of struggling for the sake of a knife cutting her baby loose.

She was unconscious from the pain before the doctor could finish. Erik was looking at her newly sewn stomach with regret as the doctor sterilized his needles.

"She won't be able to bear children after this monsieur, her uterus has been too scarred. The morning's coming within an hour or two, if she wakes by then she will be fine. If she doesn't," The man paused, and looked towards the ground uneasily. "Then understand me when I say this," Erik looked In horror at the doctors face, whose eyes now rose to meet his, "Then I have done all I can do." Erik nodded and stared into the distance. "Thank you," he choked on the words, a small tear escaping his masked eye, and rolling down his porcelain half. "Thank you for doing what you could to redeem a monster."

The man stared at him in pity, and walked over to the gondola, making his way to the dock and steps in the distance. He shouted from his place in the midst of the water, a sense of sorrow in his voice. "I did what I could to redeem a girl."

He left Erik with the sound of his echoing footsteps and Evangeline's fragile, labored breathing.

Erik sat, and thought, and cried while he waited to see those lovely eyes once more. Thinking of his mistakes, and thinking of all he had lost to them. His first mistake was being born, this is what he regretted most at this moment. And what this had cost him was the hatred of many from infancy. His second mistake, had been to continue living, this he had regretted many times, and perhaps regretted now equally to the first. His third mistake had been to kill, and kill as he had, to try to sate that pain they had inflicted upon him. His fourth, to ever have fallen in love with Christine Daae, his fifth to have killed Raoul DeChagny. His sixth, which he could never regret but forever mourn, was taking Evangeline into this life. Was not marrying her, was not leaving with her, was letting her leave, was taking her away from a safer place with her brother, was for hurting her, and for leaving her the burden of bearing his son, was making her his treasure, his only weakness that Christine could exploit in redemption for the revenge of a man who had always been good hearted. Who Erik had always despised for it.

But what he knew he would regret, most of anything if she didn't wake, and perhaps if she did, what he knew he would regret was the choice he had just made. Was the lie he had just told her. Was the surprise that would be on her face, the terror in her screams and her agonies. When she knew the truth.

Erik had picked the name of the little son he had never seen, had never fought for, had defied Evangeline's pleas to receive, who he might have left to a monster in vain if she didn't wake. His Cassius.

The name meant exactly what he was. Exactly what Erik had left him to become.

The lost, the empty.

But more truer a definition of Cassius,

was the robbed.

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It's up to you guys! Will Evangeline live or die? Message me or leave a comment on what you think should happen


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